Arlene Gottfried was a regular presence on the gritty early morning streets of New York City. She ventured into the titillating nightlife of GG’s Barnum, Le Clique and Paradise Garage among others. She frequented roller rinks, dance a thons, dive bars and back alleys. She entered people’s homes and investigated their domestic lives after dark. Through her close friendship with Miguel Pinero, the famed playwright and poet, she was introduced to the dangerous underground world of Manhattan’s heroin dens. No matter the subject, Gottfried always maintained her respectful approach, opened her heart and created connections through her camera.
A new exhibtion, After Dark, at Daniel Cooney Fine Art features a selection of Gottfried’s black and white photographs of the dark streets of New York City, the back rooms of nightclubs and the illicit drug dens of the Lower East Side circa 1980. Audiences familiar with her work will find much of this exhibition surprising. Specifically, the heroin photographs are unexpected and add a new dimension to Gottfried’s public oeuvre. This work emphasizes Gottfried’s guts and determination to photograph people on the fringes of society no matter the situation. As always she documents her subjects with empathy regardless of circumstance. And, as is likely here, she used her photography as a method to understand her own world and her intimate relationships.
Gottfried (1950 - 2017) was a photographer of the under-represented and underprivileged in New York and around the world. While Gottfried shot assignments for The New York Times, LIFE, Time and Newsweek among others she is best known for her photographs of life on the streets of New York City. Gottfried spent her early childhood in Coney Island, living above the hardware store that her father and uncle owned. At the age of nine her family moved to Crown Heights where the Puerto Rican culture captured her attention and expanded her view of the world. She studied photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology where she was the only woman in her class. She later moved to Manhattan and found work at a photo agency.
