RE/SEARCH — NO. 1 (1980), 1988 SEARCHLIGHT REPRINT

Originally Published by: RE/Search, San Francisco, 1980
This Edition: Reprinted by Searchlight Publishing, 1988
Editor: V. Vale
Cover Photographs: Ruby Ray
Format: Tabloid on newsprint
Pages: 36
Dimensions: 29.2 × 22.9 cm folded (11.5 × 9 in); 45.8 × 29.2 cm open (18 × 11.5 in)
Language: English
Condition: Good — showing age-related wear throughout the format, consistent with its age and original newsprint construction. The cover and interior pages display visible signs of handling and natural deterioration over time.

The first issue of RE/Search emerged from the underground publishing network V. Vale had developed through Search & Destroy, the influential San Francisco punk newspaper he founded in 1977. Published in 1980, the inaugural issue established the territory that would define RE/Search for decades to come: industrial music, punk, experimental literature, transgressive culture, outsider practices, conspiracy, and the intellectual margins of contemporary society.

Rather than functioning simply as a music magazine, RE/Search positioned itself as an open-ended investigation into the cultural underground. The first issue moves freely between music, literature, politics, science fiction, noise, Situationism, sexuality, and paranoia, creating the collision of subjects that would become one of the publication's defining characteristics.

The contents include Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, The Slits, Non, Factrix, Young Marble Giants, Sun Ra, and Japan, alongside writers such as J.G. Ballard, Julio Cortázar, and Octavio Paz. Additional material examines Situationism, nuclear disaster, punk prostitutes, Soldier of Fortune, rhythm and noise, and various forms of conspiracy. Contributors and collaborators include photographer Ruby Ray, artist Paul Mavrides, and Nico Ordway.

The issue is also significant for the visual language established by Ruby Ray, whose photography became closely associated with the San Francisco punk and industrial underground. Printed cheaply on newsprint and presented in tabloid format, the publication deliberately retained the physical immediacy of an underground newspaper rather than adopting the conventions of a conventional music or art journal.

This 1988 edition was reprinted by Searchlight Publishing and reproduces the original 1980 issue. It belongs to the period immediately preceding the series of RE/Search books that would establish V. Vale's publishing project as an international reference for underground and countercultural research, including Industrial Culture Handbook and Modern Primitives.

The reprint is particularly useful as a surviving edition of the original tabloid format: inexpensive, fragile, and visually direct, preserving the publication before RE/Search evolved primarily into the book and monographic format for which it later became known.

This copy is the 1988 Searchlight Publishing reprint, as identified on the back cover, and is not the original 1980 first printing.