Photo: Girls will be girls – and boys will be boys – at a pre-opening Construction Party at John Addison’s Bond’s mega-disco in Times Square. Penthouse Pet Anneka and friend, 1980. © Allan Tannenbaum from ‘New York in the 1970s’
Photo: Coming on strong on the dance floor at the 82 Club, 1974. © Allan Tannenbaum from ‘New York in the 1970s’
The 1970s were the height of personal liberation. Prior to the advent of Aids, sex was a space for experimentation by a new generation coming of age, reaping the freedoms of the sexual revolution and the women’s and gay liberation movements. Powered by a profound desire for pleasure, self-expression, and the need to connect, sexuality became an open space for men and women free from the heavy-handed social control of the 1950s – and the results were amazing.
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Nightclubs became the go-to place to live out fantasies, find a partner to hook up with, and for a brief, shining moment there was no ‘walk of shame’ in the morning. Everyone was encouraged to let it all hang out. Performers and patrons alike led decadent lives of pure, unadulterated fun. There were sex clubs as well as sex-themed parties, and sometimes people just felt the vibe. Sometimes it seems like everyone was naked just because – something virtually unimaginable now.
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As a former chief photographer of the SoHo Weekly News, Allan Tannenbaum covered New York in the 1970s like no one else. Whether visiting sex clubs like Plato’s Retreat and the Hellfire Club on assignment or covering sex-themed parties and art happenings, Tannenbaum captured the most hedonistic period in the city’s history in glorious black and white photographs.
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The author of four books, including New York in the 1970s (Overlook Press) and Grit and Glamour (Insight Editions), Tannenbaum gives us a taste of the libertines living the life, as comfortable with their bodies as they were with their lust. Here, at the intersection of gender and sexuality, it was a time when anything goes. Tannenbaum looks back at an era unlike any other, reflecting on the power of youth culture to change the way we relate to each other – and to ourselves.
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Two models wear designs based on bicycle parts by Karl Lagerfeld at the “Fashion as Fantasy” exhibition at the Rizzoli Bookstore, 1975© Allan Tannenbaum from ‘New York in the 1970s’