A French Student’s Pictures of New York City in The Winter of 1980

“Everywhere I turned I saw a great picture”

– Lionel Derimais, New York 1980

 

In September 1979, French photographer Lionel Derimais arrived in New York City to check English at Columbia University. “There was a sense that everything was quick and simple,” he says. “I just wanted to be ‘out there’ with film in my pocket, taking pictures.”

Lionel’s love of images started in 1977 when a pal confirmed him his digicam. “I immediately thought: ‘I’ll do that too’ – even though I had no idea what ‘that’ meant,” he says. That summer season, Derimais received a job at a images store, purchased a digicam and constructed a darkroom.

 

 

In late 1979 Derimais went dwelling to his native Paris however was itching to return to New York. In January 1980 he returned and started at course on the metropolis’s  International Center of Photography.

“It was a very happy period of my life: shoot, process, print, repeat. A photographer’s dream,” he says. “Everywhere I turned I saw a great picture, it was ‘cinéma permanent’! The size and the atmosphere of the city was something else: the noise of the New York traffic is so special, the cars were just like in Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, and the height of the buildings on Seventh Avenue was like the Rocky Mountains looming over the streets.”

 

 

“In 1980, New York had a reputation for being dangerous, so there was an atmosphere that you had to be careful when walking around,” he says. “One morning near the Madison Square Garden a guy tried to mug me. I managed to walk away but in my naivety, I went back to the guy, asking why he wanted to take my camera because I didn’t have much more than he did. He let me speak, then put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘If I’d wanted to take your camera, I’d have taken it!’”

– Lionel Derimais

 

“On one occasion, I saw a young kid running through the subway cars, gun in his hand, with the police running after him,” he recollects. “It seemed to me that if you stayed long enough in New York — about a week by my calculation — you would see someone waving a gun.”

– Lionel Derimais (by way of Huck)

 

More from Lionel

Lionel has lived in Brussels, Tokyo, Beijing, and on and off in London, the place he’s presently based mostly. Lionel’s favorite footage, which he publishes in shops such because the New York Times, Le Monde and El Pais, are those who inform individuals’s tales and illustrate social life.

His black & white pictures are printed by Café Royal Books beneath the title New York 1980.