In Laffont’s book, Photographer’s Paradise: Turbulent America 1960-1990, New York’s poverty is laid bare. In the Bronx in 1966, he shoots kids playing on an abandoned Plymouth Savoy–its battered tail fins and graffitied 50s bodywork a symbol that post-war prosperity is fading; and later, in 1972, he immortalizes members of the street gang Savage Skulls in the same borough, posing against a ballpark fence as if in West Side Story.
