BROADCASTS.com

b'David Godlis couldn\\u2019t believe it the night that Robert Frank walked into CBGB.\\u201cI was hanging out around the door and I thought, oh my god, that\\u2019s Robert Frank,\\u201d he says. \\u201cFor me, that was the biggest thing that could happen, because I had studied photography and he was one of my idols.\\u201dGodlis says that from the moment he walked into CBGB, which was soon after he arrived in New York, he started thinking about doing a photo book. His inspiration was Brassai\\u2019s black-and-white photographs of Paris\\u2019s nightlife in the 1930s. \\u201cI thought, this place is so crazy and so cool, I should be taking pictures here, even though I\\u2019m a street photographer who shoots with natural light during the day. I wondered if I could be a street photographer shooting by natural light at night.\\u201dMore than 35 years later, his book about CBGB,\\xa0History Is Made at Night: Photographs 1976-1979, is finally here. Godlis showed the work to publishers over the years, but no one was interested in the grainy images, shot with long exposures instead of flash. \\u201cPunk photography was all flash, and this wasn\\u2019t,\\u201d he says. \\u201cAnd it wasn\\u2019t really a music book either, so they didn\\u2019t know what to do with it.\\u201dIn the new book\\u2019s introduction, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch notes that night people are different from those who prefer the clarity of day. \\u201cAt night the edges lose definition,\\u201d he writes. \\u201cIn the city every corner or recess, doorway or alley becomes mysterious, alive with a constantly shifting variety of possibilities. One must be ready for them. Living at night requires imagination. In NYC in 1976 it was necessary just for survival. \\u201dGodlis survived to tell the tale .\\xa0One day something is old news and the next it\\u2019s legend. Sometimes success means waiting long enough to be on the right side of history.'