Jim Jocoy - Order Of Appearance Book

Label: TBW

Almost another 20 years after the release of We're Desperate, Jocoy's archive of previously unseen photographs has been re-examined and re-considered to compose Order of Appearance, a new body of work that humanizes his young subjects as they go through their daily lives sharing the tender moments of love and loss that came to encapsulate the late 70s and early 80s as the Summer of Love slowly eroded and gave way to punks' disaffected view of the world.

Unknowingly foreshadowing the AIDS epidemic that would grip underground communities throughout the country, Jocoy's poignant photos share an intimacy not unlike that felt when viewing the work of Nan Goldin, combined with the underground compulsion and clout found in the photos of Katsumi Watanabe, and Karlheinz Weinberger.

Breaking away from the singular focus of his first book, Order of Appearance broadens its scope to provide rarely glimpsed views of the punk scene. Quiet and intimate moments of barely post-pubescent youth applying makeup, readying themselves for an evening out, diving full stop into the dark of night.

Spanning the short three years from 1977 to 1980, the collection of images is structured in three chapters, vignettes from a one night affair where emotions range from delight to despair, sober to wasted, clear to blurry to half-way-clear-again by morning.

Jocoy's ability to reveal these touching moments of restless youth allow us to feel empathetic towards the bruised knees that start the book off and then laugh at the comical horror of a sunburst-yellow clownish car turned violently upside down from a accident. As a photographer, Jocoy has an uncanny capacity to make even a car wreck look like the best time ever.

Jim Jocoy currently lives in the Bay Area after a career working in UCSFs Therapy Department. He maintains friendships with many of the same subjects whom he photographed 40 years ago.