Milwaukee’s Blank Generation” is the title of WMSE’s 2010 calendar, illustrated with photographs from Milwaukee’s punk-rock scene in the late 1970s and early ’80s. It’s also an exhibit by the photographer, Stanley Ryan Jones, on display for the next few weeks in the newly opened backroom at Transfer Pizzeria (101 W. Mitchell St.).
Jones seemed to be at every punk show, camera at the ready, measuring the composition of reality with a keen sense of perception. His pictures were quickly posed in the middle of life unfolding, snapshots intended as art. Many of these photos were originally seen in the Bugle-
American and the Express, but one supposes they would have been taken even if there had been no alternative papers to publish them. Jones photographed anyone of interest, performers and clubgoers alike, finding the essence of his subjects in moody group portraits of local bands such as the Haskels and Tense Experts. He also photographed visiting emissaries from the outside world, including gaunt portraits of Iggy Pop and Jim Carroll and an engaging picture of Allen Ginsberg.
The “Blank Generation” (the phrase taken from a Richard Hell song) inhabited a nocturnal world where black was the prevailing color and gray hung at the margins. Jones recorded this subculture in lustrous black and white, imbuing his subjects with the mystery of things unseen.
