As a child of the 80s myself, I’ve been constantly baffled by the fetishisation in contemporary culture of a decade that I generally remember as having been, on the whole, a bit crap.
It seems that I’m not alone as Peterborough’s poet laureate MJ Hibbett and his band The Validators’ latest single ‘The 1980s How It Was’ tells the tale of how the decade he remembers has been reshaped by the media. The track is taken from their current album Still Valid and is backed by photographer Chris Porsz’s shots of life growing up in the East Midlands during the decade. Many of the pictures are taking from his book New England and his forthcoming collection Reunions, in which he catches up with the subjects of the original pictures 30 years later.
mjhibbett.co.uk / chrisporsz.com