Capturing the faces of New York City

David Godlis finds the real city – the unspectacular and average, but no less fascinating – in these street photographs from the Seventies and Eighties

David Godlis, armed with a film camera and an eye for the overlooked, is perhaps the most seasoned of street photographers. For decades now, Godlis has been capturing the glory and gore of New York living, its numerous streets teeming with characters begging to be immortalised in photographic form.

The Big Apple has long been viewed as a city of glamour and opportunity. Its glittering skyline whispers to individuals clinging to the belief that a life of success awaits them. But for the residents who resided there throughout the Seventies and Eighties, everyday life was usually far removed from this ideal. These normal people are the subject of Godlis’s latest book, Godlis Streets.  

For the general population over these two decades – a number that never quite reached 16 million – life was about trying to get by. Although a fairly cheap and vibrant place to live, New York in the Seventies was known as “Fear City”. Crime rates were at a record high; neighbourhoods appeared in various states of decay; buildings were torched by landlords who could no longer maintain them. While there is debate over the extent to which this description paints the whole picture, New York was certainly a strange place to inhabit. The Eighties were arguably just as gritty.

Times Square, NYC, 1979 (GODLIS)

The people and places that Godlis has spent years capturing are the real face of the city – the unspectacular and average, but no less fascinating: elderly women doing a casual bit of window shopping; couples walking hand-in-hand down a street covered in advertising; a pavement stall selling “black art” and “American art” (an image that sadly still has echoes in today’s society).

From the moment he picked up a Pentax camera, people have always been the heart of Godlis’s work. After arriving in the city in 1976, the photographer began his career capturing the eccentric and/or hedonistic figures who traversed the burgeoning punk-rock scene growing out of the CBGB club on the Bowery. The Ramones, Patti Smith and Blondie were just some of the acts to get the Godlis picture treatment.

His work then took him away from the sticky floors of CBGB and into the cold light outside. The images featured in Godlis Streets are the result of walking around and simply capturing a moment in time. Inspired by photography pioneers such as Brassai and Diane Arbus, who sought to capture individuals from all walks of life, Godlis is in his element watching from the sidelines, capturing the real world as it moves around him.

“Godlis is an inquisitive photographer,” author and critic Luc Sante writes in the book’s foreword. “[He’s] nosy without being rude, always vitally interested in people and how they occupy and employ their city.” Even today, 50 years after picking up his camera, Godlis continues his wanderings. 

Godlis Streets by David Godlis is available from 17 November from Reel Art Press