Alternative Voices: 1980’s Punk San Francisco Photographs by Jeanne Hansen • Interviews by Jonah Raskin
While working on the Murray Bowles photo book, I found myself in an early-‘80s Bay Area punk frenzy, gobbling up old photo books, zines, and newsprint rags of the day, and digging into internet rabbit holes left and right. Along the way I came across this gem, self-published in 2021, which I immediately needed to obtain at the very least for the great shot it contained of Tim Yohannan, Ruth Schwartz, and Jeff Bale in the KPFA studio during a Maximum Rock & Roll (sic) Radio broadcast in 1983. I was stoked, upon receiving the book, to find so much more of interest…
Featuring photos taken between 1980 and 1986 and testimony from 16 of the featured subjects, Alternative Voices offers a unique view of the early SF punk scene as it was experienced through the lens of photographer Jeanne Hansen and the people in her orbit.
Upon my first flip through of Alternative Voices, I was reminded that the punk scene isn’t, and never has been, all about punk rock. The scene, especially in SF in the early ‘80s, is a grand collage of all kinds of freaks and weirdos doing all kinds of cool, creative shit. I appreciate how Hansen gives it all equal weight here. Bambi Lake, the Looters, the Club Foot Orchestra, Survival Research Laboratories, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Code of Honor, performance artists, poets, visual artists, political activists, experimental musicians, drag performers, and the Space Lady can all occupy the same book without anyone having to explain exactly what their connection is. The connection, of course, is that they were all bubbling out of the same post-hippie, Carter/Reagan/Feinstein-era counter-culture, trying to make something new and vital.
While punk photo books most often focus on bands on stage (and there is plenty of that here) the most compelling part of Alternative Voices is that we get to see punks in their natural environments: Code of Honor practicing at Subterranean, the MRR crew on the air at KPFA, flyer artists making and putting up their work (plus, honorable mention to the neighborhood vigilante removing flyers — hey, they are part of our history too!), bike messengers, and cab drivers… We see punks drawing stares in the street, punks covered in frosting, punks loitering after work, and a single punk observing a dead rat suspended from a street sign. The topper is the cover shot— our lone, leather jacketed punk, Stanous Flouride, descending the BART escalator surrounded by downtown SF commuters. A classic photo that almost feels staged because of how era-appropriate it is.
Jonah Raskin’s interviews, edited into concise one-page essays from 16 of the subjects, pepper the pages of Alternative Voices. Offering distinctive perspectives, they give the book the feel of a documentary film, allowing you to enter a world, rather than just observe it. We hear what brought people to SF from far and wide, and how they each helped the scene find its footing. While there isn’t a strong narrative connecting all of these people and activities, the interviews give context and background that amplify the importance of the photographs themselves.
This book is worth seeking out even if, at first glance, it doesn’t seem to contain everything you’re hoping to find. If you’re looking for a comprehensive photographic history of San Francisco punk, this isn’t it. But it’s not trying to be. Alternative Voices reminds us that history isn’t actually the neat collection of names and events that everyone comes to know. There are always thousands of things happening outside the frame. Jeanne Hansen happened to have a camera pointed at some of them. And I’m glad she did.