Point of View

On November 30, 2018, Chris Stein, a founding member of the era defining band Blondie, and Blondie lead singer Debbie Harry discussed Stein’s book of photographs Point of View: Me, New York City, and the Punk Scene. Rob Roth, Blondie’s creative director, moderated the discussion, which hasn't been seen since 2018. Because of a generous grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation (rdlgfoundation.org), decades of past Great Hall recordings, as well as future programming, will be digitized, preserved, and made available to the public. The Cooper Union also thanks the Charina Endowment Fund for its generous support of the Great Hall. During Blondie’s reign at the epicenter of punk’s golden age, Chris Stein kept an unrivaled photographic record of the downtown New York City scene. Point of View is a personal and visually arresting collection of Stein’s photographs which captures an important, but fading chapter in Manhattan’s history. Focusing mainly on a single decade in Stein’s own world, the images presented take us from self-portraits in his run down East Village apartment to candid photographs of pop cultural icons of the time, like Harry, and evocative shots of New York City streetscapes in all their most longed for romance and dereliction.