Visible Girls: Revisited

10 September - 31 October 2022

A photographic exhibition of female double portraits taken by acclaimed photographer Anita Corbin. The exhibition brings together original images of young women from different subcultures of the early 1980s with newly commissioned portraits of the same women today.

As a 22-year old photographer at the beginning of her career in 1981, Corbin made 28 double portraits of young women from different cultural groups: skins, mods, punks, rockabillies, new romantics, rastas and young lesbians. She was fascinated by the ways in which young women expressed their cultural allegiance and identity through fashion, music and environment.

The ground breaking project, Visible Girls, toured the UK in the 80s and 90s, showing in youth clubs, town halls and libraries. More than 30 years later, Corbin launched an international social media campaign to track the women down. The result – Visible Girls: Revisited – features a new series of photographs showing the women they became alongside the photos of the women they were.

These images return with a story – the story of the lives of British women; their hopes, their experiences and their relationships. The trajectory of every one of them is a means for us all to consider our own identity and what it feels like to be a woman in the 21st century.

Images:

Liz and Jan, The Blitzs, Covent Garden, London. December 1980. Found by Visible Girls Revisited Launch at Artlink Hull

Liz and Jan, Radisson Blu Edwardian, Mercer Street, London. December 2017. Found by Visible Girls Revisited Launch at Artlink Hull