Photoville Festival Returns → to the Seaport S+11 S+14 S+3

About the Exhibit

Bridging generations of rebellion and creativity, this exhibition unites new and old faces of the NYC punk scene through the lens of five photographers across the last five decades.

Renowned punk photographers Bob Gruen, Roberta Bayley, and GODLIS bring us the 1970’s birth of punk and the peak of iconic east village venue CBGB. Alongside them, Destiny Mata and Ebru Yildiz document the modern age of NYC punk, from the DIY music venue Death by Audio to the vibrant alternative punks of color scene thriving across all five boroughs.

Witness the evolution of this raw and unapologetic movement that continues to thrive and transcend boundaries, proving once and for all that punk truly isn’t dead.

Artist Bio

ROBERTA BAYLEY

Arriving in New York in the spring of 1974, Roberta Bayley began working the door at CBGBs, New York’s legendary punk club. She started photographing the musicians who played there and soon went to work as chief photographer for Punk magazine, which gave the movement its name. She is one of the main photographers to visually chronicle the early punk rock scene, from 1975 through the 80s.

Among the artists Bayley has photographed are Iggy Pop, the Ramones, Debbie Harry and Blondie, Richard Hell, Elvis Costello, the Sex Pistols, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, Ian Dury, Brian Eno, Nick Lowe, The Damned, The Clash, The Dead Boys, X-Ray Spex, Squeeze, and a reunited New York Dolls.

GODLIS

David Godlis, who is best known by his last name GODLIS, has been photographing in New York City since 1976. A “street photographer” in the style of Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand, he wandered into the nightclub CBGB’s one night, and has become known for his photographs of the NYC Punk scene. GODLIS, who shot in the style of photographers Brassai and Robert Frank, used his handheld Leica camera and Tri-X film to capture his subjects by the natural light of the Bowery outside as well as inside the club CBGB’s. His book of those photographs, HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT, artistically documented that club between the years 1976 and 1979, when Patti Smith, The Ramones, Blondie, Richard Hell, Talking Heads and Television ruled the Bowery. Since the late 1980’s, GODLIS has been shooting the New York Film Festival, where he has been the unofficial official photographer for the last 25 years. Now thoroughly enmeshed in the digital world with a FUJI X camera, he shoots assignments and exhibits his photographs internationally. His two books of “street photography” – GODLIS STREETS and GODLIS MIAMI are available from Reel Art Press.

BOB GRUEN

Bob Gruen is one of the most respected rock and roll photographers of all time. His iconic images—including John Lennon wearing a New York City t-shirt (1974), Led Zeppelin standing in front of their airplane and Sid Vicious eating a hot dog (in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London)—have appeared worldwide in every form, from magazine covers, posters, T-shirts and even postage stamps. He is the author of 15 books including Rock Seen, John Lennon: The New York Years, Green Day: Photographs by Bob Gruen and a new autobiography Right Place, Right Time. He lives in New York.

DESTINY MATA

Destiny Mata is a Mexican American photographer and filmmaker based in her native New York City focusing on issues of subculture and community. After studying photojournalism at LaGuardia Community College and San Antonio College, she spent two years as Director of Photography Programs at the Lower Eastside Girls Club. Her photography has been published in The Culture Crush, The Nation, The New York Times, and The Guardian. Mata recently has been awarded the Magnum Foundation Fellowship 2023. She exhibited La Vida En Loisaida: Life on the Lower East Side, a solo exhibition at Photoville Festival 2020. She has taken part in a group exhibition presented by The ARChive of Contemporary Music From Her To Eternity: Women Who Photograph Music at Columbia College Chicago 2023, ICP Concerned Global Images for Global Crisis at the International Center of Photography 2020, Magnum Foundation US Dispatches Grantee 2020, Mexic-Arte Museum, Young Latino Artists 21: Amexican@ 2016 and in 2014 she exhibited photographs of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy at the Museum of New York City’s, Rising Waters: Photographs of Sandy exhibition. She is currently preparing a series of documentary works continuing her exploration of the fabric of the communities around her.

EBRU YILDIZ

Ebru Yıldız is a portrait photographer born and raised in Ankara, Turkey and now living in her adopted home of Brooklyn, NY. She has illuminated an array of faces including Mitski, Laurie Anderson, Interpol, P!nk, Rhiannon Giddens, Sharon Jones, Neko Case and John Cale. She understands the artistry of a timeless portrait. Her simplicity is signature; a tight window fitted plainly around an open soft face, often in crisp black and white or the occasional rich palette of color bathed in melancholy blue tones. The result is a slowed down kind of feeling, even meditative. That ability to freeze a vulnerable moment in time plays a large part in her documentary work as well. Part of that stems from her early days taking photos at DIY shows around New York in the kind of rooms that are cluttered and abrupt. In her first photo book, “We’ve Come So Far – The Last Days of Death By Audio”, Yıldız documented the closing of the DIY space, isolating those brief raw moments, magnifying their modesty and candor. In both her portraits and her documentary work, Yıldız manages to hone a tension while simultaneously unlocking something angelic and loose in her subjects. It’s nearly palpable. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, Pitchfork, NME, Bust Magazine to name a few.