After living in London in the early ’70s, California native Roberta Bayley arrived in New York in 1974 because it was the only return ticket she could afford back to the States.
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Serendipity served Bayley well. She soon met a young musician by the name of Richard Hell and was asked to work the door when his band Television played at CBGB, a new club on the Bowery. Bayley fell in love with the emerging punk scene of the Lower East Side and began working at CBGB five nights a week.
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In 1975, Bayley bought a camera and adopted the punk attitude to making art: sheer nerve. As chief photographer for Punk magazine, she would amass a singular archive of artists like Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry and Blondie, the Sex Pistols, the Damned, the Clash, the New York Dolls, X-Ray Spex and the Dead Boys, among others.
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