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What Manhattan Looked Like in the 1970s Through My Eyes, Part 2

All photos copyright Betsy van Die and available in high resolution from original negatives. Permission needed to reproduce. By the time I was in my second year at RISD, I considered myself a veteran visitor of NYC. I was attracted to Times Square and all the sordid sights. I never would have dreamed of photographing the seedier side of Chicago’s strip clubs in the South Loop. Somehow I felt emboldened being away from home and photographing in NYC.  Times Square was a far cry from my ivory tower art school existence in Providence and even farther from my idyllic suburban Chicago upbringing. I found Times Square both fascinating and repulsive and completely different than anything I had ever seen. I was not a total rube, having spent a lot of time as a kid in the City of Chicago itself – but NYC was unique and I was smitten. I shot a lot of B & W photos in Times Square, and in retrospect, I was lucky that nobody bothered me. But I have so many regrets regarding photos I didn’t take back in the day, including 42nd Street and the interiors of diners and bars. Probably best that I didn’t venture into the latter, since I was an attractive young woman by myself. November 1977 Tiger Sign Company, Bowery and Delancey I couldn’t find out anything about this business, but still love the signage.   Pearl Paint and Canal Street Jeans Canal Street was one of my favorite hangouts thanks to Pearl Paint, all the cool job lot stores, Canal Jean Co., a dingy little antique mall, and street vendors selling vintage stuff. Pearl Paint’s NYC demise reflected the passage of time and loss of my youth. It was one more sign of gentrification that has nearly destroyed the…

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What Manhattan Looked Like in the 1970s Through My Eyes, Part 1

All photos copyright Betsy van Die and available in high resolution from original negatives. Permission needed to reproduce. You might wonder why a Chicago native who has lived in the Windy City nearly all her life is so fond of the Big Apple and has an Instagram page dedicated to NYC in the 1970s. The answer can be traced back to my youth and coming of age when I was an art student at RISD. I took the Amtrak train from Providence to Penn Station many times during my four years at RISD, staying with my older sister in one of her many NYC apartments either in the Village or SoHo. I think the other reason I am enamored of NYC is that my dad was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn and while you can take the boy out of Brooklyn… Indeed, he adored NYC and made yearly trips there for many decades that combined work with pleasure. From the time I was a toddler until he was too old to travel, he would attend winter meetings of either the American Psychiatric Association or American Psychoanalytic Association in the Big Apple. My mom would hang out with the other wives during the day and my parents would go to art galleries, museums, and plays during his leisure time. He shared so many personal stories about NYC with me, both about his family and growing up in Brownsville, as well as about Manhattan, Coney Island, and the Catskills. And of course, he was a talented amateur photographer who taught me how to develop and print photos in our basement darkroom when I was just 12. It’s hard to forget my first NYC visit because my sister and I got our signals crossed and I waited in the wrong area of Penn Station….

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We Were All Just Kids – Ode to the Inspired Genius of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe

Just before I lost my high level position as director of communications for a national medical association in mid-June 2011, I read Just Kids by Patti Smith. In the darkest days after losing my job, I found inspiration and salvation in Patti Smith’s words. Just Kids also sparked a rediscovery of her groundbreaking music, but with a more appreciative, mature ear than I had at RISD when my freshman roommate played Horses day and night. Her cutting-edge punk rock music was a bit too hard for me back then, but listening to it some 30 years later made me fully comprehend the sheer genius and depth of her musical poetry. Below is a collage I created in homage to Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe that I exhibited in a group show at Studio 659. During my depths of despair, I played several Patti Smith songs over and over as if I was once again a young adult coming of age. Well, I guess in essence I did go through a rebirth of sorts spurred on by losing my high-paying job. Having more time on my hands enabled me to get back to my fine art and exhibiting my work. Gloria, Dancing Barefoot, People Have the Power, and the brilliant Horses among other songs inspired this burst of creativity … that continues to this day. While I haven’t had a major solo gallery show, I feel promise looming on the horizon.

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The Times Square of My Mind

As an impressionable young woman, I journeyed to fabled Manhattan from my relatively sheltered life as an art student at RISD in Providence, R.I. Upon alighting at Penn Station for the very first time, there was a bit of a glitch. My older, worldlier sister who had already been living in the Big Apple for 3 years had not given me clear instructions on where we were to meet. Those were the days before cell phones – there was no way to get in touch with her. I was an innocent 18-year-old in New York City wondering what the hell had happened to my sister – after about 40 minutes or so I decided to go search upstairs and there she was … my street-smart sister nearly as frantic as I. For a good part of this visit I was on my own – marveling at the gritty, wonderful streets of NYC. Camera in hand, I attempted to summon the spirits of dead immigrants on the Lower East Side, admired the Art Deco lines of the Empire State Building – imagining King Kong and Fay Wray at the top, and prowled Canal Street for Vintage. A longtime admirer of the photography of Bernice Abbott, Jacob Riis, Walker Evans, and Helen Levitt, I too desired to capture a moment in time in “The City that Never Sleeps.”

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