In 1975, New York had reached its breaking point. After years of being denied funding for essential services under the federal policy of “benign neglect,” the city was falling apart. Robberies, burglaries, and aggravated assault had spiked dramatically while the city was $34 million in debt, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. President Gerald Ford had just announced he would veto any bill calling for a federal bail out, effectively telling New York to drop dead.
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Though the city had been abandoned, those who remained were shaped and molded by the struggle for survival. They were the poor, the working class, the artists and eccentrics who understood nature abhors a vacuum and remade New York into a landscape of art, culture, and music unseen before or since. Though many had fled, some like city native Godlis returned with dreams of becoming a street photographer.
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Godlis got his start in photography in 1972 after seeing the Diane Arbus exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art during his sophomore year at Boston University. After graduating, he studied at ImageWorks alongside famous photographers Nan Goldin and Stanley Greene, and began walking the streets of Boston — but he quickly realized the photographs he was making did not have the grit and glamour of Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, or Arbus. After getting robbed, Godlis realized, of the two cities New York was clearly the safer option.
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