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For the past forty years, every new generational sub-culture has looked back to discover the art, style and culture of the 1960s and ‘70s, appropriating and incorporating the music and style of those decades into a modern experience. Leeds, along with the rest of Britain, has its club nights, bands, record stores and clothes shops dedicated to the music and fashion of the beats, the mods, the skins and the punks. 

The young people of ‘The Z Generation’, photographed here, are rummaging through the archives, but with the added desire for the technologies those decades utilised. 

For them, being modern and looking to the future is found by looking back into the past. Vinyl records, film cameras, typewriters and old guitars are vital to the search for a more embodied and authentic future. 

 ‘My Generation – Leeds New Modernists’ (2016) is a collection of portraits of this new generation. 

The project was funded by Leeds Inspired, hosted by The Chemic Tavern, Leeds and printed by Pressision Printmakers, Leeds. It has a specially commissioned essay by writer Boff Whalley and was designed by Andy Edwards with a slipcase and adopts the aesthetics of record albums and 1960s design.