[The Guardian] Ali Smith’s 90s New York punk scene – photo essay

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

New York in the 1990s was off-kilter, unfiltered, and out of focus. We – artists, musicians, punks, underground dwellers – lived in neighbourhoods the police largely let police themselves, below the radar of mainstream society, carving lives out of the city’s bedrock with our bloody fists. Long before the immediate feedback loop of social media, our creative ideas bubbled in a cauldron of diversity and inspiration until they could no longer be contained.

Matt Verta-Ray and I spent endless days into nights playing music, watching films like Zentropa, taking pictures and making films. On this hazy night, around 1995, we filled his bathtub, took turns donning the same rubber outfit, filled the bathroom with microphones and lights (dangerous much?), and took photos while singing and submerging until the rooster crowed at dawn. (This rooster was both metaphorical and literal. There were a few of them down on the old Lower East Side.)

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