Punks and Skinheads of New York's East Village
Liliana Caruana | New York, United States
Photographer: Liliana Caruana
Exhibit Title: Punks and Skinheads of New York's East Village
Location: New York, United States
This project documents the East Village punk community in the mid-1980s, a highly visible subculture often misunderstood by outsiders. The images offer intimate portraits of young musicians, runaways, and outsiders who created identity and belonging in abandoned buildings through style, performance, and mutual support. The work examines how resistance, improvisation, and survival shaped a self-defined world.
All photographs by Liliana Caruana
Work included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY and The New York Public Library, Miriam and Ira Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photography
I started photographing New York’s East Village punk scene in the mid-1980s because something about it grabbed me—equal parts visible and hidden. These young people were inventing themselves on their own terms: through music, style, and the communities they created. I lived in the neighborhood and began approaching them slowly—on the streets, in the doorway of CBGB, and eventually inside their living spaces: abandoned buildings they shared as squatters. Most were between fifteen and twenty-one: musicians, runaways, kids who had slipped beyond conventional life or turned their backs on it. Their days were improvised, their apartments spare—mattresses on the floor, little heat, little certainty. They supported themselves with music, panhandling, or odd jobs. Clothing became armor and declaration: ripped, layered, defiant. The world outside saw myth and menace; what I saw up close was fragile, tender, defiant, and fiercely human.
These images are my record of that interior life—intimate moments, not spectacle. They are my attempt to honor the people who trusted me with their stories, creativity, and wounds.
Book: Rebels: Punks and Skinheads of New York's East Village: 1984-1987, Turtledove Press, 2016
More work: www.lilianacaruana.com
Instagram: liliana.caruana.photography
Email: LRC1946@ICLOUD.COM
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