Roberta Bayley made the cover photograph for The Ramones’ first album, and The Heartbreakers’ album LAMF. She photographed Blondie, The Sex Pistols, and many more punk and new wave artists in New York in the late seventies.
“I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and came to New York City in the spring of 1974. I had been living in London for two years. New York seemed very alive after that. The city was bankrupt, rents were cheap, and poverty fueled the imagination. Originality flooded the streets. On the music scene, glitter and glam were fading. Everyone was looking for something, the next thing. To be it or see it. And then, suddenly, there it was. In January of 1975, Television’s manager, Terry Ork, asked me to work the door at CBGB on the Sunday nights when the band played. It became my job for the next few years, as more and more bands came to play.”
“In November of 1975 I bought a Pentax Spotmatic and began taking pictures of the different bands. I went to work for John Homstron and Legs McNeil at Punk magazine and learned the true meaning of creative insanity. The Ramones used one of my photos for their first album, and so did Richard Hell and Johnny Thunders’s Heartbreakers. I went to England and photographed the punk scene there. I worked for Blondie for a year in guerilla warfare. I toured with the Sex Pistols across America recording the end as we know it. I shot fumettis for Punk and crossed America with Richard Hell in a 1959 Cadillac. By 1980 everything had changed. I’d pretty much photographed everyone I had ever wanted to photograph who was still alive, and I was in serious danger of losing my status as an amateur. I put away my camera and disappeared. These photographs are my record, the evidence of what was.”
Roberta’s limited edition photographs are available to purchase in a range of size options.
The Ramones
Blondie
Roberta met Debbie Harry in the early days of CBGBs, leading to a lasting friendship between the two women. In 2006 Roberta released her book Blondie: Unseen 1976-1980, a candid photographic memoir of the band which also included a personal introduction by Debbie.
The Sex Pistols
The Heartbreakers
The Clash/ Joe Strummer
Ian Dury
Biography
Roberta Bayley was born in Pasadena, California and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended San Francisco State University for three years before dropping out in 1971. Roberta worked as a door person at CBGB’s, New York’s legendary Lower East Side punk club, and subsequently befriended leading musicians on the punk scene. She is known as one of the principal photographers to visually chronicle the punk rock music movement from the mid 70s through the early 80s. Roberta was also the chief photographer for Punk magazine.
Among the punk music artists she has photographed are Iggy Pop, Blondie, Richard Hell, Elvis Costello, The Sex Pistols, Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers, The Ramones, Nick Lowe, The Damned, The Clash, The Dead Boys and The New York Dolls. Monographs of Roberta’s photographs are featured in multiple books, while she herself co-wrote the book Patti Smith: An Unauthorized Biography. She appeared on screen as a street girl in the gritty independent feature New York Beat Movie starring Jean Michel Basquiat.
Roberta’s photographs have been exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Austin, Paris, Portland, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, Mexico City and Pittsburgh. She lives and works in New York City.