Glory Days of New York Hardcore

Brooke Smith will forever be known for her role as Buffalo Bill's unfortunate kidnap victim, Catherine Martin, in The Silence of the Lambs.

-  ANDY GREENE

But before she "put the lotion in the basket," Smith was a part of a hardcore punk scene that congregated at dingy New York clubs like CBGB and Great Gildersleeves for shows by Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, Bad Brains, and other underground icons. "I was attracted by the anger of the music," says Smith. "And the outsiderness of it all. You recognize your tribe when you meet them. I just felt, "This is where I'm supposed to be." From the very beginning, she brought her camera along with her and captured intimate photos of performers and fans. The pictures sat in boxes for decades before she uncovered them during a move. Now, they've been exhibited in a gallery, and they're the centerpiece of a book, Sunday Matinee. "Nobody was trying to get rich or famous back then," she says. "It was our scene. We controlled it."

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Smith snapped this photo outside of CBGB of Murphy's Law/Cro-Mags drummer Pete Hines (right) next to a guy she doesn't remember. "Everyone was just starting to get their tattoos," she says. "That tattoo of the man on the left just means that he was born in America in 1966."