*Top,* Blondie’s Nigel Harrison, Debbie Harry, and Chris Stein, photographed by Martyn Goddard in Midtown Manhattan, 1978; *above,* Harry at the Copacabana nightclub.

Harry leaning on Goddard’s Nikon FE camera.

With a white-label record she marked with a kiss.

*Top,* on Blondie’s tour bus to the Spectrum arena, in Philadelphia; *above,* during a session at the Record Plant recording studio.

The band posing for the cover of the *Best of Blondie* album on the roof of the Record Plant.

*Top,* Harry performing at the Palladium concert hall; *above,* standing with life-size cutouts of herself at a photo call.

Picture This

A new coffee-table book collects Martyn Goddard’s photographs of Blondie, capturing the pop-punk band at their peak in the hot New York summer of 1978

“She would make a great cover story,” said photographer Martyn Goddard in early 1978, over drinks with Alex Low and Geoff Axbey, respectively the picture editor and art director of The Telegraph Sunday Magazine. He was pitching Debbie Harry, a rising star of the New Wave scene with her band, Blondie. The magazine’s “tyrannical” editor, John Astey, wasn’t convinced. He wanted to see the pictures first. Goddard secured the assignment only by paying for his own flight to New York.

Chrysalis Records agreed to cover his hotel expenses at the Gramercy Park Hotel, where Harry and the guitarist Chris Stein were staying. When Goddard checked in that May, he discovered the hotel’s storied guest list: Bob Dylan, David Bowie, the Clash. “It was the kind of place bands stayed on their way up and on their way down,” he remembers a barman telling him.