The Deuce & the Bowery

Leland Bobbé, a native New Yorker, has been a professional photographer for over thirty years. After being hooked on the HBO series The Deuce, our photo editor did a search for the real Times Square from the 70’s. We kept coming up with the work of Leland Bobbé. His images did not romanticize the scene but bravely captured the despair, the grime, the street business, and the texture and rhythm. No wonder, Bobbé lists his influences as coming from rock and roll, blues, the music of Miles Davis, and great films. Bobbé’s award-winning photographs tell even more than what they are showing: you can hear the sounds and smell the street. He opens up a crack into the facade and we get to delve deeper into the inner workings of his subjects and their environment.

Bobbé was kind enough to put these images together for us and to spend time with our editor. We wanted to know how he captured the images without too much risk, as both Times Square and the Bowery were very rough areas in the 70s. He told us he shot with a wide angle lens which he pre-focused to 6 feet. He held his camera down by his hip and as he walked by, he surreptitiously clicked the shutter. He did not want his subjects to know he was photographing them. Bobbé used to live downtown in Chinatown where he would ride his bike around town with his camera using a longer lens and shoot.

He still shoots on the streets of New York but not the way he used to. He has a newer approach documenting layered and peeling posters on walls which are brilliant and we will bring those to PROVOKR soon. The photography of Leland Bobbé is a truly amazing visual adventure.