Night Vision: The West Village at Night in the 1980’s
A lecture and slideshow with photographer Efrain Gonzalez

Efrain John Gonzalez was born in the Bronx, raised in Long Island, and moved to Manhattan in 1975, where he dropped out of college to drive a taxi. He would drive through New York armed with an old Nikon camera and photograph the streets and the people who made the city come alive at night. In the 1980’s he discovered the underground cultures and private clubs of Greenwich Village and the Meatpacking District, and recorded this night culture that flourished in the dark and seedy streets, piers, clubs, and bars. His photography is a window to a past that is being erased by market forces and the passage of time. Published in the New York Times, Time Out magazine, and the Village Voice, Gonzalez has two photos in the permanent collection of the Museum of the City of New York, and is working on a book of night photographs taken in the Meatpacking District in the 1980’s.