176 pages Edited by Yan Morvan Text(s) by Jean-Marc Barbieux Photograph(s) by Yan Morvan 30,6 x 23,9 cm Language: French Hardback Publisher: Marval 2000
Over more than twenty years, Yan Morvan documented youth gangs from the inside.
From Parisian rockers of the 1970s to suburban street gangs, from skinheads and “skin hunters” to squatters and marginal crews, Gang offers a raw and uncompromising portrait of youth cultures from the 1970s to the mid-1990s.
Far from journalistic clichés, Morvan’s photographs are the result of long-term immersion. They capture codes, rituals, territories and tensions, revealing both the violence and the vulnerability of these groups, at a moment when youth identity was forged between music, politics, social exclusion and urban space.
Shortly after its release, Gang was banned by a Paris court following a legal complaint from one of the individuals portrayed, who had not given permission for publication. This decision abruptly halted its distribution, turning the book into a sulphurous and almost untraceable object.
Both documentary and confrontational, Gang has since acquired a near-mythical status — a rare and essential visual archive of youth, marginality and social fracture at the end of the twentieth century.
