Pete Townshend At Home

Dot Pattern Screen print from reversed Colin Jones Photo

This photograph by Colin Jones captures Pete Townshend at home surrounded by several damaged guitars handing on his wall like an art installation in 1966.

To a generation recovering from the effects of a war and now struggling in an austere society Townshend’s attitude here is a shock to view with each expensive Rickenbacker broken and damaged. This image however is a sign of The Who’s zeitgeist to come with their attitude across London with a new explosive sound in popular music encompassing fashion, Pop Art and of ‘The Swinging Sixties’.

Colin Jones had a remarkable peripatetic career. Growing up in the bomb-damaged East end of London, he trained as a dancer and joined The Royal Ballet travelling the world with Rudolph Nureyev and Margo Fontaine. Around this time, he bought his first camera and following the example of Hungarian Michael Peto, who took pictures of the corps de ballet in his quite unobtrusive way. Back home he photographed the harsh world of miners in the Northeast struggling to work in the coal fields, which has parallels with’ Billy Elliot’- but in reverse!

His next commission for The Sunday Times was called The Black House. Documenting the lives of first-generation immigrants, he lived with them in their explosive world of Notting Hill. Colin’s style was always gentle and considerate. He never retired and showed his work in galleries processing his own work in the darkroom right up to his passing after contracting Covid-19 in 2021.

I screened this edition print to Fedrigoni Sirio Pearl as an homage to Colin Jones’ strong Mono style.

Edition size: 50

Print methodology: Silkscreen on silver card

Paper size: 51 x 72cm

Image size: 42 x 63 cm