Disco Boy

In the photo series Disco Boys, named after a song by Frank Zappa, the artist presents a comprehensive series of youth types that functions as a kind of cross-section of historical musical subcultures. The individual body becomes a projection screen on which different styles are displayed. A wide spectrum of fashions and poses is explored, from Saturday Night Fever, to David Bowie’s Berlin phase and the coquettishly eccentric Hustler style, to the punk snottiness that was just coming into vogue in 1977. The inscription into photogenic pop stereotypes anticipates the performative element that, in the following decades, was increasingly to characterize self-styling trends using the tools of pop culture. The Disco Boys knew about the possibilities for integrating particular roles into one’s own appearance long before it became a lifestyle maxim of the 1980s and 1990s.



 

Workdetails
  • original Title: Disco Boy
  • Date: 1977
  • Genre: Song