Rich Allen: Capturing the Grit and Gangs of 1970s New York
New York City in the 1970s was a city on the edge—financially broke, crime-ridden, and in many ways, abandoned to its own chaos. Entire neighbourhoods were left to decay, with empty buildings serving as makeshift homes for squatters, artists, and those who simply had nowhere else to go. The Lower East Side was one such place—a volatile mix of cultures, countercultures, and underground movements, where the lines between rebellion and survival blurred daily. And right in the thick of it, camera in hand, was photographer Rich Allen.
Allen wasn’t interested in capturing postcard-perfect images of the city. His work didn’t focus on the glamour of Studio 54 or the glitzy rise of punk at CBGB. Instead, he turned his lens on the unfiltered, raw, and sometimes dangerous reality of New York’s subcultures—particularly the world of biker gangs. His stark, black-and-white photographs offer a raw, unflinching look at this underground scene, cutting through any romanticized notions of leather-clad outlaws and free spirits on the open road. Allen’s bikers weren’t the rebels of Easy Rider; they were part of an urban survival story, caught in a city that seemed to be imploding.
From Theatre to Photography: A Shift in Focus
Born in 1949, Allen’s creative journey didn’t begin with photography. Originally from New England, he started off as an actor and writer, working with the Theater Company of Boston in the mid-1960s before moving to New York in 1967. There, he became involved with Channel One Underground TV, an experimental film and performance collective that later spawned the cult classic The Groove Tube (1974), a satirical comedy that poked fun at television culture.
But filmmaking in New York wasn’t cheap, and Allen needed a more immediate creative outlet. That’s when he picked up a Pentax camera and started wandering the streets. “A struggling filmmaker with no money, I turned to photography and fell in love with it,” he later recalled. Armed with rolls of 79-cent black-and-white film, he started capturing everyday life—whatever caught his eye, whatever felt real.
A Gritty Look at Biker Culture
Among the many subcultures Allen documented, none were quite as visually striking—or as inherently rebellious—as the biker gangs that roamed the city. These weren’t weekend motorcyclists out for a joy ride—these were tight-knit groups of young men who had built their own community around speed, brotherhood, and a refusal to play by society’s rules.
In his most striking series, Allen captured chopper gangs—groups known for radically modifying their motorcycles, cutting off parts, stretching others, and creating sleek, elongated machines that looked more like mechanical beasts than factory-made bikes. In Allen’s photographs, these men gather on city streets, their bikes lined up with an almost militaristic precision, a curious contrast to their outsider status.
But Allen wasn’t just drawn to the aesthetic of the biker world. His images also hint at the darker side of this subculture—a world where camaraderie coexisted with violence, and where the city’s crumbling infrastructure served as the perfect backdrop for a movement that existed outside the law. His photos of the Hell’s Angels and other chopper gangs don’t try to glorify them; instead, they offer a documentary-like realism, an unpolished look at the harder edge of biker life in 1970s New York.
The Lower East Side: A City Within a City
Allen’s interest in New York’s underground world didn’t stop with biker gangs. His camera was drawn to the streets of the Lower East Side, a neighbourhood teeming with artists, punks, squatters, and street kids who had learned how to get by in a city that had, in many ways, abandoned them. He captured scenes of children playing in crumbling lots, leather-clad gang members leaning against graffiti-covered walls, and junkies slumped in doorways, all without passing judgment or trying to impose a narrative.
One of his most famous subjects was Fernando Madrid, a young boy Allen often saw skipping school. Fernando’s story became a haunting portrait of youth in the Lower East Side, a child navigating a world of poverty, crime, and rebellion with a mixture of innocence and toughness beyond his years.
A Lasting Legacy
By the 1980s, New York was changing, and so was Allen’s career. While he continued to photograph the city, he also returned to filmmaking, releasing several short films that were shown on PBS and at international festivals. In 2012, he published Street Shots/Hooky: NYC Photographs 1970s, a collection of his work that cemented his status as one of the key visual chroniclers of this era. His photos have appeared in American Photographer, Yachting Magazine, and numerous galleries, ensuring that his gritty, no-nonsense portrayal of 1970s New York lives on.
Today, Allen splits his time between Rhode Island and New York City, running City Pound Productions, a film and photography company. His work remains a testament to a city that no longer exists—a city of biker gangs, street kids, and urban grit, where survival often meant carving out your own rules.
For those looking to understand what New York really looked like in the 1970s—not the movie version, but the real, lived-in city of decay and rebellion—Rich Allen’s photographs remain essential viewing.