GODLIS

.....There have been several legendary photographers strongly associated with New York City but only two who are known only by one name: Weegee (AKA Arthur Fellig), who died in the 1960s, and Godlis, who is still at large. While Weegee was able to build a shroud of mystique around himself and his work with his apparently almost supernatural abiltiy to always be the first man with a camera on a crime scene or where something visually amazing and newsworthy was happening (hence the name Weegee, after the Ouija Board. Truth is he had a police radio in his car that clued him in as to where the action was.), Godlis has come to be known as, in the words of The Boston Phoenix, "the enigmatic shutterbug" due to the fact that little is generally known about the man behind the famous images of the early NYC punk scene other than that he is known as Godlis. Best known for his gritty, film-noiresque iconic black & white images of the Ramones, Patti Smith, The Dictators and other original instigators of punk rock, his street photography is equally amazing and in the same class as the work of any of the other great master photographers.

.....When the first exhibition of HUNG, a traveling art show I curate that features the work of rocker artists, took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2005, a writer from The Weekly Dig wrote the following of the man and his work: "My favorite pieces in the show are photographs by Godlis. I’m not much of a sucker for photography, but his portraits of Patti Smith and Keith Richards are moving in tone, posture and expression, and his crowd images taken at Fenway and a Southie St. Patrick’s Day parade in the mid-‘70s are sociologically fascinating and compositionally beautiful. Like a Diane Arbus with more humor and less heartbreak, Godlis is a photographer who understands a few things about human beings." Damn straight.

.....All of the photos on this page were taken on New Year's Eve 2006. This was the last photo shoot I would do for my forthcoming epic punk book, NEVERMIND NOSTALGIA: The Last Book On Punk Rock (Part One), which covers a period of 10 years (1996-2006) of my documenting the men and women who had a hand in instigating what would come to be known as punk rock. These photos were taken on The Bowery, on Saint Mark's Place and in the long hallway that leads to Godlis' studio on St. Mark's Place. We had fun doing these photos and it was a nice way to end working on a project I spent 10 years of my life doing. Check out his work at his website, www.Godlis.com, and check out the man himself below...

Above: Shooting Godlis

Black wings, a hammer to hit you with and the famous photo of Patti Smith

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