Striking portraits of Birmingham’s punks and goths

One after­noon in 2013, Birm­ing­ham-based pho­tog­ra­ph­er Rizwan Ali was catch­ing a bus out of the city cen­tre when he spot­ted some­one he recog­nised. It was an old col­lege friend, but he had under­gone some­thing of a trans­for­ma­tion. Instead of his usu­al hood­ie and jeans com­bo, he was wear­ing a long black coat, leather gloves, a black vest and grown-out, flow­ing hair to match.

It was the first time Ali, now 41, had real­ly noticed a goth in his life, and he start­ed think­ing about his old friend’s new­found form of self-expres­sion. ​“It was real­ly inter­est­ing to me,” he explains. ​“In col­lege, this per­son was what we would call a very strait-laced, very straight down the line per­son, so to see him dressed as a goth was like: ​‘Okay, this is a bit different!’”

Soon after, Ali found him­self wrapped up in a con­ver­sa­tion with a co-work­er who had been involved in the UK punk scene for decades. ​“We have an old­er gen­tle­man who works with us, and he’s been a punk since prob­a­bly the ear­ly 70s,” Ali says, refer­ring to a mem­ber of long-run­ning punk band The Accused. ​“He was telling me about the his­to­ry of the Birm­ing­ham punk scene and all the places he used to play, like The Crown the city cen­tre and the Mer­maid Pub in Sparkbrook.”

With lit­tle pri­or knowl­edge of punk or its roots, Ali start­ed to research its his­to­ry and began mak­ing the cul­tur­al con­nec­tions between punk, post-punk and goth gen­res. ​“Some­thing just clicked in my mind,” he remem­bers. ​“I thought: let’s start doc­u­ment­ing punks and goths.”

Since 2017, Ali has been trav­el­ling to var­i­ous bars and music venues in Birm­ing­ham and its sur­round­ing areas with his cam­era, meet­ing with and mak­ing pic­tures of those involved in the local punk and goth scenes. Fea­tur­ing pit action at gigs and warm por­traits of the bands and fans, his pho­tographs are now pre­sent­ed in his ongo­ing online series Punks and Goths.

“I think the scene is fan­tas­tic here. It’s real­ly good, real­ly diverse,” Ali gush­es. ​“And I kid you not, every sin­gle goth and every sin­gle punk have been some of the nicest peo­ple that you can ever imag­ine. There’s nev­er any egos, there’s nev­er been any in-fight­ing – it’s a very close, tight-knit community.”

Explor­ing themes of iden­ti­ty, accep­tance and indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, the most­ly black-and-white pic­tures are an ode to the sol­i­dar­i­ty between the scenes as well as their dis­tinc­tive aes­thet­ics. Giv­en the diver­si­ty of expres­sion and tastes, dis­tin­guish­ing them isn’t always straightforward.

“I think a lot of it is about the aes­thet­ics of it and the way that they dress,. That dark, all black [look] of the goths, say­ing ​‘we’re here, we’re loud and out’ real­ly appeals to me,” Ali says of their dif­fer­ences. “[Where­as] with the punks you get the big boots, stud jack­ets, etc. But you do get some who don’t dress like the cliché punks – I would say a punk is some­one who rebels against society’s per­ceived norms.”

With his sub­jects often smil­ing at the cam­era, all dra­mat­ic make-up, back-combed hair and bat­tle jack­ets, Ali’s series shines a human light on sub­cul­tures that have been his­tor­i­cal­ly maligned by main­stream society.

“I think all sub­cul­tures have a bad press image – like rap and hip hop, punks and goths, and espe­cial­ly skin­heads,” he con­tin­ues, address­ing the neg­a­tive stereo­types often attached to those who express them­selves freely. ​“A lot of this comes from the fact that they were peo­ple who ear­ly on rebelled against the norms and peo­ple couldn’t accept that at the time. Obvi­ous­ly you see punks por­trayed as loud mouth trou­ble­mak­ers and goths as these weird reclu­sive types, and that couldn’t be fur­ther from the truth.

“Every sin­gle per­son I’ve met, all of them have nor­mal day-to-day jobs, and this is just their out­let,” he con­tin­ues. ​“And I think that’s fan­tas­tic, per­son­al­ly.”

More of Punks and Goths by Rizwan Ali can be seen on his ded­i­cat­ed Insta­gram page.

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