About Teri the Photographer

Photographer Teri Bloom in the Astor Street subway station. Image composited with a vintage '45 red zebra-striped record box
Teri Bloom began her photography career by taking family photos with a Brownie camera, and became a total rocker after landing her first Beatles 45s in the early ‘60s.
 
Being too young to go to Woodstock or be a hippie, she enviously witnessed the 60s unfold on a B&W television in the suburbs of NJ.  Watching teenagers drive around town in convertibles listening to WABC’s Cousin Brucie blast the Beach Boys, she went to sleep listening to WNEW’s nightbird Allison Steele broadcast the coolest music that FM radio was playing in the early ‘70s.
 
Landing in the East Village of NY City in 1980 turned out to be the best place a young music photographer could be. Shooting concerts night after night for over twenty-five years, she worked by day as a commercial photographer. While shooting the local punk and new wave scene of the early 80s, she loved being caught up in the audience’s excitement — sometimes being pushed around by slam dancers and other times trying to remain steady on the trampolining floor of the Ritz as the massive audience screamed and pogo-danced.
 
She studied photojournalism with Guggenheim recipient Larry Fink, Ken Kobre and Magnum’s Eugene Richards.  Henri Cartier Bresson’s photo essay “The Decisive Moment”, which analyzes the micro-seconds of peaking action leading up to the photographer's pressing of the shutter, has always guided her eye and instincts.  Clients included ASCAP, Sony Music, Concord Jazz, NY Rocker, DownBeat Magazine, Trouser Press, Time Magazine, Rolling Stone, Spin, Circus and the NY Times, among others.  

She dedicates this collection of 1980's era music photos to the scores of musicians throughout history whose courage, drive, uniqueness, obsessive creativity and risks have profoundly enriched our lives. And whose work created the inspiration and possibilities that future generations will forever build upon.