JOHNNY, Joey, Dee Dee and Tommy stand, united in damaged denim, against a brick wall. This is the 1976 cover photo of the Ramones' debut album, Ramones, the most iconic punk image of all.

It is the work of Roberta Bayley, whose brief photographic career coincided with the rise and fall of punk, rock'n'roll's last great rebel yell.

That work, not least that Ramones rogues gallery, has been accumulated in Punk, The Portfolio, a collection of 24 prints to accompany the limited-edition Punk, The Book.

Only 24 sets were printed by Bayley, and one has been acquired at an Amsterdam fair by Lucius Gallery, one of those little artistic gems that defies York's reputation for lacking unusual outlets of quality and distinction.

Newly mounted in black frames, the black-and-white photos are for sale at £150 to £300. Punk may have come cheap, all ripped shreds and safety pins, but history has a price, and this price is worth it. Miss out on buying in old York, and America's punk cognoscenti will snap them up at an imminent New York art fair.

Thirty one years ago, Bayley herself had gone to New York, by accident she says, having run out of luck and money in London. The city was at its supposed nadir, bankrupt, dirty and desolate. "It looked great to me and turned out to be the perfect breeding ground for something to happen and it did: punk," she recalls.

She got a job working the door of CBGBs for Television's gigs, began taking photos of the bands - Ramones, Talking Heads and Debbie Harry's Blondie - and hooked up with Punk Magazine in the year of New York punk, 1976. She did the last Sex Pistols' US tour and soon it was over for her. "Sometimes the best thing you can do is walk away, and I did," she says.

Others did not survive: three Ramones and Sid Vicious, Joe Strummer and a baby-doll Paula Yates from these photos are all dead. Even the Twin Towers behind The Damned have gone.

Updated: 10:34 Friday, April 01, 2005