Even if her name isn’t familiar, her photographs are. Roberta Bayley’s photographs of the early New York punk scene have a wonderful ubiquitous quality. Sure, her pictures have appeared in magazines ranging from the original Punk magazine to Rolling Stone, and on album covers for artists such as The Ramones and Richard Hell. But Roberta’s images have also traveled beyond the usual print media outlets. For years now, her work has graced T-shirts for sale on St. Marks Place and most recently has appeared on the high-rent walls at Mary Boone Gallery. These pictures have a life of their own, surfacing here and there to remind us of a music scene that influenced so many but was witnessed by only a fortunate few.
Unlike the work of her contemporary, Robert Mapplethorpe, whose studio shots of Patti Smith and Television clearly have their place in pop history, Bayley’s photos are less about an individual personality and more about a particular scene and a brief moment in pop culture – punk, in it’s original incarnation, was here and gone before anyone made a big deal about it.
In its formative years the NY punk scene was surprisingly small, populated by an insular group of iconoclastic young musicians, some of whom could barely play their instruments in any traditional sense. But whether they knew it or not, they redefined pop music and the visual culture that came with it. Bands such as The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads and Television regularly performed for small audiences comprised mostly of friends and fellow musicians at CBGB, the club on New York City’s Bowery, which in the mid-seventies was the sort of dive that would have put new meaning into “slumming,” if uptown or suburban kids dared set foot in the place. The truth was that the masses were into disco and by the time “new wave” entered the common lexicon the scene at CBGB had changed forever. New York punk peaked before 1980 and was quickly entering the realm of parody as kids from the suburbs, decked out in new wave uniforms of skinny ties, narrow lapels and way too many safety pins finally slummed their way down to the Bowery.
Roberta Bayley was a natural to document the punk scene. She was at the right place, (CBGB) at the right time (1975) and happened to have a serious knack for photography. She was dating Richard Hell when Television was the house band and she ended up working the door, which usually meant collecting a total of about fifty dollars - two dollars for each of the twenty-five people paying to get in. Bayley began taking photographs as a favor to the bands who couldn’t afford to hire a professional and soon found herself producing the sorts of images that take us right back to the source - in front of the stage, behind the stage, or to Coney Island with Joey Ramone, skinny legs and all.
I was lucky to catch up with Roberta Bayley a few weeks ago when she kindly agreed to answer a few of my questions about past, present and future.
Marilyn Cvitanic: When did you know you were good at photography?
Roberta Bayley: I took a photography course when I was 16 in high school. That was the only ‘instruction’ I ever had. The teacher, Brooks Dutt, would give an assignment, like ‘show action’ or ‘tell a story’ and then your photo would get a check, a check plus or a check minus. We had Yashica cameras on loan and developed our own prints. I got a lot of checks and check pluses but also some check minuses.I think photography is instinctive. It’ s about seeing. Composition and technique are involved, but really it's about seeing. Even when I don't have a camera I am always ‘seeing’ photographs! Cartier Bresson said it's about lining up the heart, mind and eye but I doubt he was aware of that every time he took a picture!
MC: At what point did you know your photos weren’t just promo shots for the bands but were something bigger, eventually taking on iconic status?
RB: These are the kind of things I honestly don't think about. Of course 30 years later, the fact that some of my images have been used a lot and are recognized by lots of people doesn't escape me, but it's not my place to call them iconic, or ‘art’. I mean is a Campbell's Soup can iconic because of Andy Warhol or because everyone recognizes that can? I suppose at some point images take on a life of their own, and that's good, but I never thought of these things when I was taking the pictures. On the other hand, I don't think I thought of them as promo shots either. I always thought of them as a collaboration between me and my subjects which resulted in a photograph.
MC: Did you have a favorite band or subject to photograph, one that you really felt an affinity with?
RB: Richard Hell and I had a long collaboration. I did most of his record covers. He had his own specific ideas about his image and I helped him actualize it. David Johansen was a great subject, we spent a lot of time together hanging out and I always had a camera. Deborah Harry is the dream subject and I was lucky enough to photograph her in some unique narrative situations for Punk magazine.
MC: What ‘fine art’ photographers were you influenced by?
RB: Growing up we had a copy of The Family of Man in our home and I looked at that a lot, though I must say, I didn't understand it as art. Also we always subscribed to Life magazine which was the great popular forum for the world's great photojournalists, though again I just thought of it as pictures. I loved Richard Avedon's portraits of Marilyn Monroe in Life. Those were spectacular. I think I was influenced more by fashion photography than ‘fine art’ photography which would've been like Eugene Smith, Ansel Adams and Cartier Bresson. I looked at David Bailey, Avedon, Jerry Schatzberg, Henry Clarke, William Klein and loved their work so much, even though at the time I didn't even know their names! Then, as now, photographers had a teeny weeney credit you could hardly see! It wasn't until later that I found out who took all the wonderful photos for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar.
MC:
What kind of camera did you use?
RB: I briefly owned a Nikon F in the 60’s but in New York my first camera was a second hand Pentax Spotmatic. Later I sold that to Lee Brilleaux from Dr. Feelgood and bought a black body Olympus OM-1. I loved the Olympus cameras because they were relatively small and the lenses were compact. I had 3 or 4 stolen but I still have my last one, the OM-2. Now I am using a digital SLR, the Nikon D200. I was never much of a technical person, you can take a good photo with almost any decent camera.
MC: I noticed that you have some photos of the Sex Pistols on your website. Did you go on the American tour with them? What was the atmosphere like? Was Sid Vicious obviously an accident waiting to happen?
RB: The tour was pretty depressing, but many of the shows were brilliant. John Lydon was sick for most of the tour and we didn't interact much with him. Sid was kicking dope and pretty miserable. He had a very sweet side and I think it was terrible what happened to him. Once you get caught in the junkie thing it's very hard to get out, especially if your image is SID VICIOUS. People seek you out and want to give you drugs and in the end somebody gave him too much. There is a lot of doubt about whether he killed Nancy but I think he felt a lot of guilt about her death, and that combined with the specter of jail and a coterie of druggie friends (including his mother) made it unlikely that he could survive.
MC: What made you stop taking pictures in 1984?
RB: I never really stopped taking pictures, I just got out of the music business. Life is more interesting when you're not defined by one thing as a profession. I became a journalist and tried my hand at many different jobs. I went back to school and got a degree in Public Health. I like to keep an open mind and see what life brings rather than trying to plan it. The idea to resume my professional photography was also pretty spontaneous, and I just went with it.
MC: You mentioned that you’re doing portraits now. Is there someone in particular that you’d like to photograph? And what is it that inspires you about your subject? At this point are your subjects artists and musicians?
RB: Portraits are pretty much what I've always done. I love street photography but I was never very good at it. I guess on some level it seems like an invasion of privacy, so while I like to look at those photos I feel self conscious about taking them. I have an idea about doing a series of portraits of women because all my women friends and acquaintances are so interesting, and visual. There is so much unconventional beauty waiting to be revealed.
Some musicians have requested my services because they like my 70s work, and that's cool. And then of course my favorite model is my pug, Sidney.
MC: I know that you’ve referred to your work as photojournalism yet it is now on exhibit at Mary Boone, a fine art gallery. What do you perceive as the difference between fine art photography and photojournalism? At what point do the two meet?
RB: Photojournalism to me is just realism - Gary Winogrand, Robert Frank, Cartier Bresson, WeeGee, all those guys, they were just recording life. I don't think there is any difference between photojournalism and fine art photography. The location it’s displayed doesn’t define it, although it took photography quite a while to get into galleries and museums. Again these are the things the ‘arbiters of taste’ try to define, partly because it gives them a job and also because they like labels. Avedon's Dovima with the elephants and Wee Gee's crime scenes were always art to me.
Want more? Check out www.robertabayley.com
Also look for The Blank Generation Revisited : The Early Days of Punk Rock by Roberta Bayley, Stephanie Chernikowski, George du Bose, Bob Gruen, Ebet Roberts, David Godlis, Schirmer Books (January 1997); and Patti Smith: An Unauthorized Biography by Roberta Bayley and Victor Bockris
Roberta Bayley has a book on Blondie coming out in France in April.
Marilyn, what a great post.
Shark
Thanks. This was a fun piece to do.
I saw Robert's punk photos at Mary Boone last month, part of the "I Love My Scene" group show, definitely the best work in the gallery. I'm looking forward to seeing her new stuff.