JIM JOCOY | ORDER OF APPEARANCE

JIM JOCOY | ORDER OF APPEARANCE

July 14 - August 19, 2018

Artist’s Reception & Book Signing

Saturday, July 14, 7-9 PM

The eye of Jim Jocoy finds beauty in the wild. His photography is always in service to the magic of the devious iconoclast, exhibiting dignity to the outriders. –Thurston Moore, musician, Sonic Youth

I met Jim around 20 years ago. He carried with him a photo album of Polaroids and prints. They were amazing. His work seemed to radiate that time in the late 70's when I first moved to SF. They were raw and intimate, harsh yet soft--his vision was ahead of its time. –Jim Goldberg, artist

These Days is thrilled to present Jim Jocoy | Order of Appearance, an intimate and revealing selection of images embracing the burgeoning San Francisco punk club scene from 1977-1980.

Almost 20 years after the release of his first monograph, We’re Desperate, produced with the help of Sonic Youth front man Thurston Moore and fashion designer Marc Jacobs and widely regarded as the definitive catalogue of early West Coast punk fashion, Jim 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 found in the work of Nan Goldin, combined with the underground compulsion and clout that permeates the photos of Katsumi Watanabe, and Karlheinz Weinberger.

Spanning three short years from 1977 to 1980, the collection of images expose 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 allows us to feel empathetic towards a girl with bruised knees and then laugh at the comical horror of a sunburst-yellow clownish car turned violently upside down from an accident. As a photographer, Jocoy has an uncanny capacity to make even a car wreck look like the best time ever.

Visit jimjocoy.com to learn more about the artist.