Alexander Heir’s New Book of Punk Flyers and Illustrated Art

Alexander Heir’s painstaking illustrations of DIY culture.

April 17, 2014


Alexander Heir's incredible pictures of gay punks, stabbings and tattooed kids have mostly proliferated on xeroxed flyers for bands like Destruction Unit and Limp Wrist, limited edition scarves and sweatshirts and small runs of 7-inch records, but that put hims squarely in the lineage of some of history's best punk artists: Raymond Pettibon, Gary Panter, G.B. Jones and Anonymous Boy did their best work on flimsy pieces of paper for zines and comics and flyer that sometimes only made it into the hands of 10 people, and there's a very particular type of radicalness to that type of private pride. Fortunately, Sacred Bones has compiled a large helping of Heir's work in a new book, Death Is Not the End, out May 13, and the breadth of detail and craftsmanship in every splash of ink feels at once tailor-made only for underground eyes and completely necessary as a time capsule of this moment in DIY culture. "When human civilization is inevitably reduced to rubble," he says, "I hope whatever people remain might find this book, perhaps in a bombed out library or house, and be reminded that it is just important to laugh as it is to cry." Pre-order the book here—in twenty years time, you'll be happy you have a permanent record of even culture's most fleeting memories.

Alexander Heir’s New Book of Punk Flyers and Illustrated Art