New York Noise

Photographer Paula Court‘s new book captured the Big Apple at a time of raw creative ferment – as her subjects recall

In the late 1970s and 1980s, New York sizzled. The economically ravaged city became an affordable refuge for a wave of artists, performers and impresarios. Creative envelopes were pushed, clubs descended into debauchery and the DIY ethos of punk prevailed.

Recording it was Paula Court, resident photographer at the Kitchen Centre, a performance space that nurtured America’s avant-garde and numbered Philip Glass and Laurie Anderson among its prime movers. Court’s book “New York Noise” features more than 400 shots of the era’s leading lights including Madonna, Andy Warhol, Patti Smith and William Burroughs. She prefers to let her pictures do the talking, but on this page and overleaf, subjects including Anderson and David Byrne reflect on ten years of artistic dynamism.

Madonna pictured by Paula Court in 1988 from the book New York Noise

Source: Times Online