In 1977, the final full year before Polish born Bishop Karol Józef Wojtyła was elected head of the Vatican Church, punk was attempting to climb over the Berlin Wall and infiltrate the Soviet Union.
Sid had famously forgotten his passport on a trip to West Berlin, leaving the Sex Pistols unable to visit the East. But, through music magazines smuggled from the west, the distribution of double-sided demo tapes, and the appearance of banned eastern punk bands at soviet approved jazz festivals, punk began to infiltrate some of the most regressive regimes in the world to provide a sense of freedom for the youth trapped inside.
This portrait of Bishop Karol Józef Wojtyła, later to become Pope John Paul II, is made from bits of eastern European punk memorabilia from 1977.
