#PictureThis: Paul Zone’s “Playground” Gets Up Close With Rock Idols

This has been old home week for the downtown scene and photography. Ann Magnuson and Paper‘s Carlo McCormick reminisced for Tseng Kwong Chi‘s exhibit at the Grey Art Gallery on Wednesday and Thursday night was Friends In Deed‘s photo auction benefit at Sikkema Jenkins Gallery. Friday night brought out the 70s & 80s rock scene to the Leslie-Lohman’s Prince Street Project Space for an exhibit and book signing by Paul Zone for Playground. Zone recalls back in the day, when Debbie Harry, and the NY Rock scene was raw and new;

“They weren’t even in bands yet, they were in the audience or in the club watching the New York Dolls. Basically you would walk into a Bowie concert or other concerts at the Fillmore and there would be a handful of people who would be dressed a little bit better than everybody else, I’m talking about a very small group of people. When the Ramones and Blondie started to play at CBGB, and clubs like that, there were only about 20, 30, or 40 people in the audience and all of them had their own bands and they were just friends.

Taking pictures and hanging out with everybody wasn’t even something that you thought about. I did have a 35 mm later on, but it was just a $20 camera and I’d get the photos developed at the drug store or something like that, so they never were professionally blown up.

There was that aspect of wanting and needing to be with something new and different and exciting and of course glam rock was the most exciting thing that was happening.”

Paul started his own band, The Fast, with his two brothers, Miki and Mandy. In 1976 they released anthem, “Boys Will Be Boys”.

About ten years ago, when he was at an exhibit in L.A. that featured some photos of his famous friends back from the day, he had the idea to dig up his old photos:

“I went back to my parents’ house, and I went to my sister’s garage, and I went here and there, because I’ve moved around so much over the last 40 years. The main thing that I did find was a tremendous box with every negative still in tact. I went into the darkroom with a friend and we started developing all of the photos and blowing them up to big professional-sized prints. And that’s when I started to realize what I had.”

“It was definitely an exciting thing to see, because I never realized – there were so many negatives that had shots on them that I never even remembered, I might not have developed them or may have given the photos away.”

And after a few exhibits of the work in L.A. and Europe, the idea for Playground was born…

“It’s not just a photo book, I wanted to put a story to it and talk about what it was like being a young guy at that time and having all of these friends and taking all of these photos and being involved in the New York underground.”

Growing Up in the New York Underground: From Glam to Punk, was just up for three days at Leslie-Lohman Gallery’s Prince Street Project Space in SoHo. Playground: Growing Up in the New York Underground is available here.