The MArTA will host a unique exhibition dedicated to the Ramones and the New York punk scene.
As part of Medimex 2026, Taranto will welcome the Italian premiere of “Roberta Bayley: The Ramones, CBGB’s and New York City”, featuring 50 photographs that tell the story of the birth of the Ramones, the energy of CBGB’s, and the imagery that forever shaped the history of punk.
Four young men lean against a weathered wall on New York’s Lower East Side: ripped jeans, leather jackets, long hair, and expressions hovering somewhere between indifference and menace. It is 1976. Those young men are the Ramones, staring directly into the lens of Roberta Bayley.
Born in Pasadena, California, and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, Roberta Bayley attended San Francisco State University for three years before leaving in 1971 and moving to London. There, she had her first meaningful encounter with the world that would later define her career: in 1973, she briefly worked for Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood at their iconic shop, Let It Rock.
In 1974, Bayley arrived in New York, just as the history of punk was about to be written. In July of that year, she met musician and poet Richard Hell, and a few months later she began working at the door of CBGB’s at the request of Terry Ork, manager of Hell’s band, Television.
CBGB’s—an acronym for Country, Bluegrass and Blues—became the crossroads of New York’s downtown music scene, home to Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Blondie, Television and, of course, the Ramones.
What is remarkable about Bayley’s story is the speed with which photography became her calling. It was only in November 1975 that she purchased her first professional camera, intending simply to document the vibrant downtown music scene unfolding around her. Before then, photography had remained an unrealized aspiration.
Just three months after buying that camera, she took the photograph that would become the cover of the Ramones’ debut album.
The story of how that image became the album cover has since entered punk legend. In 1976, Bayley began working with John Holmstrom and Legs McNeil at Punk magazine, photographing the Ramones for its third issue. Punk was more than a magazine: it was the place where the aesthetics and language of an entire subculture were forged.
The image was never intended to be an album cover. After photographing the band inside a loft, Bayley suggested a walk through the neighborhood. A crumbling brick wall near East Second Street and the Bowery provided the perfect backdrop. Bayley captured the spirit of the band with extraordinary immediacy.
Although Sire Records had commissioned a professional photographer—reportedly paid around $2,000—to create the album artwork, neither the Ramones nor their manager Danny Fields liked the result. They needed an alternative quickly, and Bayley’s photograph was chosen instead. The image went on to help define the visual identity of punk in the second half of the 1970s, becoming an icon capable of encapsulating an entire cultural movement.
Following that shoot, Bayley became the principal photographer for Punk magazine. She travelled to England to document the British punk scene, worked with Blondie for a year, and accompanied the Sex Pistols on their 1978 American tour. Her archive became an extraordinary visual map of an unforgettable decade.
Today, Bayley’s photographs, correspondence, diaries, personal papers and professional materials are preserved in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, a testament to the historical and cultural significance of her work.
Around 1980, Bayley decided to put down her camera. As she later remarked with characteristic irony, she had already photographed almost everything she wanted to photograph and feared she might lose her status as an amateur.
On 17 June at 7:00 PM, Roberta Bayley will meet the public in a special conversation at MArTA.
