Incredible 80s photographs of London's mod revivalists from i-D's new show

Britain’s history is all the richer thanks to the the subcultures the country has fostered. Holding the placard for this shining reputation is i-D, the publication founded by Terry Jones and his wife Tricia in 1980 which has been celebrating youth’s weirdest and most wonderful for 30 odd years now. So it’s perfectly apt that this week the magazine launches its first ever TV series with Channel 4 looking at British style history, entitled Street Sound and Style.

Written and narrated by Ewen Spencer, the show covers the symbiotic relationship between style and music across “mods, skins, suedeheads, punks, soul boys, ravers, junglists, indie kids, emos and grime crews,” and the iconisation, bastardisation and appropriation of each of these movements. The first episode, The New Breed, looks at the mods and skinheads of the early 1980s, and in particular Paul Hallam, a mod revivalist with a passion for music and a collection of original photography which would have most archivists swooning.

“My earliest pictures would have been taken before the mid-80s explosion happened,” Paul explains at the beginning of the programme. “That’s why I shot on black and white film, because we wanted to make it look 60s. But you know, apart from the cars and the number plates you could easily believe that was 1964, not 1984.”

Watch Street Sound and Style on Channel 4 here.