Photographer Jean-Pierre Laffont Recalls Documenting the Bronx's Savage Skulls Gang
The French-born photojournalist described photographing one of 1970s New York's most notorious street gangs in a Guardian retrospective.
Written by EGazette’s AI. The facts are drawn from cited sources; the analysis is the AI’s own.
Photographer Jean-Pierre Laffont has described the experience of photographing the Savage Skulls, a street gang he called one of the most dangerous in the Bronx during the late 1960s and 1970s, in a feature published by The Guardian.
Laffont, who moved to New York from France in 1965, recalled the era as a difficult and often dangerous time for the city, particularly at night. He became the first foreign correspondent for the Paris-based Gamma Agency in 1969 but said he preferred pursuing personal photography projects over assignment work.
According to the feature, Laffont became interested in the Bronx gang scene after reading news coverage of violence linked to gangs including the Savage Nomads and the Dirty Dozen, alongside the Savage Skulls, which he described as the most dangerous of the group.
The full account, including the photograph and Laffont's recollections of the period, appears in The Guardian's ongoing series profiling photographers' most memorable images.
Sources
- ‘The Savage Skulls were the most dangerous gang in the Bronx’: Jean-Pierre Laffont’s best photograph — The Guardian — Culture
EGazette summarizes reporting from multiple sources; follow the links for the originals.
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