Image of modern evil

The 'Images of modern evil' (IME) series is an embodiment of the artist's personal reaction to the years of the Second World War in Melbourne and to the blackout periods in particular. Tucker has said of the IME series that: "They came directly out of wartime Melbourne. I remember a newspaper story about girls in a back alley, with some diggers, doing a strip-tease for them... This was part of the images stock-piled in my mind... The GI, the digger, the schoolgirl tarts, Victory Girls." Tucker also states that: "I was still the outraged Edwardian puritan; and the crescent seemed to embody the virulent and primal sexuality which had been released in the blackout." Tucker's misogynist image is a charged representation of the changing sexual practices and perspectives, and related moral panic, which occurred during the Second World War.