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New York City 

by Chris Stein

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A new collection of unseen photographs of New York City's 1970s punk heyday, by one of the icons of the city's golden age of music, Blondie's Chris Stein.

For the duration of the 1970s - from his days as a student at the School of Visual Arts through the foundation of the era-defining band Blondie and his subsequent reign as epicenter of punk's golden age - Chris Stein kept an unrivaled photographic record of the downtown New York City scene.
Following in the footsteps of the successful book Negative, this spectacular new book and exhibition present a more personal and more visceral collection of Stein's photographs of the era. The images presented here take readers from self-portraits in his run-down East-Village apartment to candid photographs of pop-cultural icons of the time and evocative shots of New York City streetscapes in all their most longed-for romance and dereliction. An eclectic cast of cultural characters - from William Burroughs to Debbie Harry, Andy Warhol to Iggy Pop - appear here exactly as they were in the day, juxtaposed with children playing hopscotch on torn-down blocks, riding the graffiti-ridden subway, or cruising the burgeoning clubs of the Bowery.
At once a chronicle of one music icon's life among his punk and New-Wave heroes and peers, and a love letter to the city that was the backdrop and inspiration for those scenes, Point of View transports us to another place and time.

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Abandoned store in New York City, 1971.
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Dee Dee and Joey Ramone at CBGB's. New York, 1975
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Iggy Pop. New York City,  1976
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Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry. New York City, 1975

We hung out all the time in the clubs, like Max’s (Max’s Kansas City) and CB’s (CBGB’s), and there were all these bars up and down 3rd Avenue below 14th Street, where Taxi Driver was filmed. All those bars are gone now. We used to do shows in some of them. There was this club on 23rd St called Mother’s that we used to play at. We played at Max’s, but we played more at CBGB’s. There was kind of an unwritten rule where one didn’t play at one within a week or two of the other. We played at CBGB’s I think every weekend for seven months in a row in ’75/‘76.

Chris Stein

Chris Stein on Music Photography
Rock Scene
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