CBGB (Stage) by Joseph O. Holmes

CBGB (Register) by Joseph O. Holmes

Hello, collectors! Over the years, we've brought you bits and pieces of New York City as seen by Joseph O. Holmes. Joe's cinematic sweeps of the metropolis we love the most have the ability to create their own legends—his photos of Prospect Park painted snow-white render the space an urban wilderness; an anonymous woman in a yellow dress becomes a starlet at sunset. Likewise, he documents the people and places that make the city legendary. A staple of NYC's music scene for 33 years, CBGB is one of those places—steeped in stories and the grit and grime of rock and roll.

CBGB (Register) and CBGB (Stage) were taken just weeks before the revered music club shuttered its doors forever, five years ago, in October 2006. The layers of flyers and playbills, graffiti, stickers and spilt beer are as dense and sticky as the history of the space—visible traces and testaments to the beloved venue that launched the cataclysmic careers of countless bands. The Ramones, Blondie, Sonic Youth, Patti Smith and the Talking Heads all played there in their nascent days and graced the stage till the end—Ms. Smith performed at the very last show.

In his artist statement, Joe describes what it was like to be there in CBGB's waning days:

In September 2006, I spent 10 days shooting the interior of legendary NYC rock club CBGB. Six weeks later the club closed its doors forever, and the fabled walls and stage were dismantled. A year after that, as former owner Hilly Kristal succumbed to cancer, a high-end clothing store negotiated to take over the space.

The club had been a favorite venue for countless rock and punk acts, but for those few days my experience of the club was the exact opposite of most people's. I came to look forward to my visits as a time of peaceful solitude. I arrived each morning at 11:00 with my tripod and camera, greeted Hilly at his desk, and then passed into a silent and empty club. During the following three to five hours of shooting, I rarely saw another human. The club was so dark, even during the day, that I had to carry a flashlight. After framing each shot, I took five to seven bracketed exposures, with each exposure lasting as long as 30 seconds, and I ended up with more than 1800 individual frames.

And that's how I came to spend hour after hour sitting stock still in CBGB, alone in the dark among the empty beer bottles and broken guitar strings and abandoned drum sticks, waiting in the silence for the shutter to close.

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— Sara