Fotoreportage23: In Search Of Ian Curtis
by Katja Ruge

Snapshots from another life, another world

Joy Division bring the obsessives out. In this instance, Ruge has trawled Europe, checking out places touched with JD significance, nearly all either abandoned, knocked down or forgotten. And she’s photographed them, with a Holga 120 CFN camera, in grainy black-and- white of course.

Curtis’ teenage friend, Mark Reeder, contributes a couple of photos for the covers, easily the most revelatory here. The others cause much the same emotion as the stills in the posthumous Atmosphere video: they’re effective because they’re associated with Joy Division, but they’re not Joy Division. Not being English, Ruge may find more worth in a snapshot of the Hope & Anchor than a Londoner. It’s just another grimy venue on the gig circuit today, but probably wasn’t much better when Curtis et al played there in 1978.

The second half of the book finds celebrities scrawling what Curtis means to them on scraps of paper. Jarvis Cocker remembers him as a “door into another world”, whereas Johnny Marr considers him a “busy ghost”. That last statement seems the most apt. As more and more labours of love like this surface, clearly the truth about Joy Division and Curtis will never be found, and only really live on in the obsessive’s heart.

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

ISBN 9783981185607

Reviewed by Jake Kennedy
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