I would venture to guess that Paul Zone describes himself as a former rock star, but to me he’s something else—a rock-and-roll photographer, that increasingly rare breed whose energy and drive and discipline go into making pictures that reflect the highs of life on the New York stage. As a kid in the nineteen-seventies, when rock and punk were redefining themselves as No Wave and then New Wave—I may be getting my Wave order wrong, but you get the point—Zone hung out with his brothers Miki and Mandy in legendary halls like Max’s Kansas City and CBGB’s. Eventually, he joined their band, the Fast; afterward, in the eighties, he and Miki formed the duo Man 2 Man. Through it all, Zone took pictures of what amounted to an extended family, a broke-ass group in which no one was famous but everyone was a star. His book, “Playground: Growing Up in the New York Underground,” is an album about stardom’s essential feature: an interesting aura shaped by an interesting face. We see Debbie Harry, that era’s Marilyn, trying to become herself backstage in a trash-littered bar, while the transgender performer Jayne County stares out at Zone, as sure of her place on this earth as the tallest tree. Zone’s black-and-white images are beautiful because they’re filled with attitude. His subjects are all so young and trying not to show it; the poses they strike speak of their relative innocence and glory, and their fearlessness, too. The photos document the importance of the glitter stuck on one’s heel in those long-ago days when not fitting in was more than a badge of honor: it was a commonplace, like courage.
Photographs by Paul Zone from “Playground: Growing Up in the New York Underground,” published by Glitterati Incorporated.
