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Ali Smith’s 90s New York punk scene – photo essay
Photographer and musician Ali Smith’s photographs and memories take us on a tour through downtown Manhattan’s punk scene in the 1990s, as she takes in gigs in Speedball Baby, shows in abandoned buildings, and legendary club CBGB
We walked the runway for underground designers in repurposed synagogues and empty churches, relics of the immigrants who had moved through the Lower East Side and Alphabet City before us, leaving their mark and culture. I straddled worlds: sometimes, camera-wielding-observer, other times, subject – the only woman on the stage, in the van, at the police station, surviving the slings and arrows society reserves for women who refuse to comply. Ron sweats from the inside of his men’s threadbare suit after a show, in one of the many “luxury” dressing rooms on our major label tour in the middle of America somewhere, 1996.
Or read this on The Guardian
