With Twin‘s imminent fourth edition all about rebellion, the time couldn’t be riper for Flash Projects’ latest pop-up photography show, Street Fighting Man: Fifty Years of Youth Protest. Recent months have seen an electric surge in youthful uprising, as the young and angry have taken to the streets in a way not seen for over a decade. From the top up fees protests in London to last week’s riot against Tesco’s in Bristol, a new generation is asserting itself in ways reminiscent of the Sixties’ student protests.

Taking its name from The Rolling Stones‘ track, Street Fighting Man, which was inspired by Mick Jagger’s experience of an anti-war demonstration in 1968, the celebrates how youth culture and media have conspired to create historic moments over the past fifty years. Bands like The Rolling Stones, whose concerts were often accompanied by riots, and The Clash were mouthpieces for fans. While photographer Caroline Coon’s pictures of punk bands The Sex Pistols and The Slits not only record a seminal scene but asserted the right to individual identity. Today, these images of the Brixton and Poll Tax riots are a reminder of how difficult times breed discontent and dissidence. Often change doesn’t come quietly, it resounds on the streets.

Street Fighting Man. 50 years of youth protest is on at Flash Projects, 5 Savile Row, W1S 3PD until the 4th June 2011.
flash-projects.co.uk

Tags: Brixton Riots, Caroline Coons, Flash Projects, Mick Jagger, Poll tax, Sex Pistols, Street Fighting Man, Tesco, The Clash, the rolling stones, The Slits

Twin may just have found a new favourite gallery – Atlas on Dorset Street. One of the few London art spaces to deal exclusively in fine art photography, it’s the official agent of Magnum photographers – displaying (and selling) the works of masters like Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

The current exhibit is from French photographer Dominique Tarlé. ‘Exile: The Making of Exile on Main Street’ is an intimate snapshot of the lives of The Rolling Stones over a six month period in the early Seventies. Taken while they were putting together their stellar tenth album, expect brooding black and white shots of the guitar-slinging Mick, Keith and the boys surrounded by gangs of gorgeous, good time women.

‘EXILE: The Making of Exile on Main Street’ is at the Atlas Gallery, 49 Dorset Street, London until the 31st August.

Keith, Anita, Parsons, Telecaster, 1971.

Mick and Keith, 1971.

Knocking (Keith at the Door), 1971.

La Joconde (Keith and Anita), 1971.

Words by Catherine Hudson.

Tags: atlas, Catherine Hudson, dominique tarle, dorset street, exile: the making of exile on main street, the rolling stones