Book Description

New York in The 70s is a remarkable body of work produced by photographer Allan Tannenbaum while he was photo editor of the SoHo Weekly News in Manhattan. Based mainly on news and feature stories assigned by the paper, the photographs encompass many aspects of New York life while capturing the heady exuberance of the 1970s and early 1980s. SoHo and the art world were his primary subjects, yet the images also provide a broad chronicle of the city's politics and society. Entertainment - especially the music scene - and night life became a large part of the editorial mix. The collision of continuing 1960s counterculture with the remnants of Nixon, Watergate, and Vietnam, coupled with a stagnant economy, was a catalytic force that resulted in an explosion of creativity. By photographing everything from street gangs to disco divas, from homeless to Hollywood stars, Tannenbaum had assembled a personal diary of his journey as a photojournalist and raconteur through a strange era in New York. His studio portraits, night-time flashes, and street photography paint an unique and often unseen picture of the 1970s.