//All photos (c) Jonathan Ross//

Here are more previously unpublished images from London’s punk demi-monde.

Coincident to receiving Joe Stevens’ photograph of the pre-Pretenders Chrissie Hynde and photographer Kate Simon in Malcolm McLaren’s Sex Pistols Nude Boy shirts, collector/gallerist/Londoner Jonathan Ross supplied me with this fabulous selection of Polaroids taken at his west London house in the same period.

These include Hynde and Simon as well as their fellow Americans-about-town, the performers Judy Nylon and Patti Palladin and artist/tattooist Ruth Marten, writers Tamasin Day-Lewis and Jon Savage, Ross himself, his girlfriend Gina Louthan and Sir John Betjeman.

//Clockwise from left: Patti Palladin, John Betjeman, Tamasin Day-Lewis, Gina Louthan. (c) Jonathan Ross//

//Gina Louthan + Jonathan Ross. (c) Jonathan Ross//

//Judy Nylon, Ross, Chrissie Hynde. (c) Jonathan Ross//

So how is that John Betjeman was cementing the punk poetry connection in these photos? The Poet Laureate was Ross’s godfather (he is the son of another poet, the editor of the London Magazine, Alan Ross, while Tamasin Day-Lewis is of course the daughter of another Laureate, Cecil Day-Lewis).

//Nylon, Ruth Marten, Hynde. (c) Jonathan Ross//

//Louthan, Jon Savage, Nylon. (c) Jonathan Ross//

//Kate Simon, Nylon "spraying her throat to combat some infection rather than consuming illicit substances". (c) Jonathan Ross//

I’m very grateful to Ross; the down-at-heel glamour of the mise-en-scène – the decorated walls (by a character by the name of Bones apparently) and abandoned posturing – perfectly evokes this phase of London life, and in my next post I’ll be presenting the fascinating stories behind images Ross has also supplied me of artefacts relating to two of the scene’s prime movers: Johnny Thunders and Iggy Pop.

Read more about Jonathan Ross’s Gallery 286 here, while a piece based on an interview I conducted with Judy Nylon five years ago is on THE LOOK and her partner in Snatch Patti Palladin is featured here.

Ruth Marten has subsequently worked with the likes of Jean-Paul Goude and Peter Mayle, and most recently exhibited at the van Grinten gallery in Koln. Read more about her activities here.

Among Tamasin Day-Lewis’s current projects is a new book for crowd-funded publisher Unbound and Jon Savage’s latest published work is featured in the catalogue for the Met’s new exhibition Punk: Chaos To Couture.

Read my interview with Kate Simon here.

Tags: Chrissie Hynde, Gina Louthan, John Betjeman, Jon Savage, Jonathan Ross, Judy Nylon, Kate Simon, Patti Palladin, Ruth Marten, Tamasin Day-Lewis