Subway Kiss, Debbie Harry Chris Stein, 1976

ROBERTA BAYLEY (B. 1950)
Subway Kiss Debbie Harry and Chris Stein 1976
cibachrome print 
16 × 20 inches (40.6 × 50.8 cm) 
executed in 1976.
This print is numbered 12 from an edition of 25.

A cibachrome print of Debbie Harry and Chris Stein kissing on a moving New York subway train, 1976 — among the most-quoted images of the early NYC punk scene's central creative-and-romantic partnership, made a year before Blondie's debut album would land and several before "Heart of Glass" would carry the band into global pop. The motion of the train is held in the streaked blur of the carriage windows behind them; the kiss steady at the centre of the frame. Bayley shot the photograph from inside the relationship, the band and the scene — she had been at CBGB longer than most of the bands she documented, and Harry and Stein were among her closest subjects across that entire arc.