Street Shots of New York City in 1978

“Every day was like being in a scene from a movie set in the city”

– George Wright

 

 

In ‘New York 1978’, British photographer George Wright shows us the city.

Having trained as a graphic design at London’s Wimbledon School of Art in the early 1970s, Wright took a class taught by the prolific US-born photographer John Benton Harris (28 September 1939; died 26 August 2023), a self-styled “visual sociologist” best known for his photo essays of the English. Harris introduced him to the work by the likes of Robert Frank, Gary Winogrand and his close friend Tony Ray-Jones, with whom he had shared a New York apartment.

In 1978, Wright was in New York, staying with a friend on the city’s Lower East Side. “New York in 1978 was still referred to as ‘Fear City’,” Wright recalled. “The NewYork Ripper was still at large and the Son of Sam mass murderer had only recently been apprehended. On every pillar on every subway station platform was scratched the word ‘PRAY’. Comatose bodies littered The Bowery, porn shows were ubiquitous in Times Square and the city was bankrupt.”

Wright was living in a place of colour, contrast and energy.

“Every day was like being in a scene from a movie set in the city or from a page by the writer Joseph Mitchell,” he adds.  “There were pictures to be taken everywhere: kids shoot jets of water from water hydrants at passing motorists, saxophonists practicing jazz on fire escapes. I was only once warned to be careful by a passing cab driver while I was photographing on the derelict West Side highway and not to stray in the vicinity of the Anvil or Manhole clubs.”

 

“It’s often thought that you need to be a part of what you photograph in order to get to its essence … but an outsider can sometimes cut through in a way that a local just can’t.”

– George Wright

 

 

A collection of his work is available as George Wright — New York 1978 from Cafe Royal Books.