Fascinating Photos of New York from 1979

These photos were taken by Tony Redhead in 1979 and more can be seen at his Flickr site and some ‘then and now’ versions at tonyredhead.com. In his own words this is how he came to take them:

I’d been living in London for a couple of years working for London Festival Ballet as their props master and I’d taken up photography to keep me busy while waiting in wings for the next call.

Being a bit restless I moved to New York to pursue my photography and spent some time with Duane Michaels, doing classes with him and other studies.

I was living down in the East Village, in those days a much more edgy place to live than it is now. On this particular day I’d decided to go out for a walk and I’d taken my old Nikon F and loaded it with Ilford Black and White and headed south down toward Houston and SoHo.

I loved New York in the 70’s it was a quite different place than it is now. The local East Village neighbourhood still had many of the characters from the 20’s and 30’s hanging out in the cafe’s and bars.

I came across the slides when I was cleaning out my old house in Sydney and had them scanned.