It's hard for anyone born and raised in New York City during or past the Giuliani Era's Disneyfication of Times Square (and, to considerable extent, the city at large) to remember that not too long ago New York was, for all intents and purposes, a sewer.

Andrew Savulich's new photo book The City documents this odd, dark, and dangerous period in New York's vast history from the 1980s to mid-1990s with a series of old, black-and-white photos that vividly depict a stark and sordid city in violently corrosive disarray from the searching lens of an everyman on the street.

The New York Times has a preview of the book and the photos are a doozy. Savulich's bold, bravura shooting style, the unmistakable technique of a spot news shutterbug, makes him an unflinching and atypically unlimited eyewitness to some of the city's grimmest urban episodes, from sidewalk overdoses and mangled car wrecks to subway stabbings and public suicide attempts, producing work that is grave, graphic, and evocatively, indelibly tense.

Check out these jarring, remarkable photos, and find out more info about Savulich's book (due out on May 26th from Steidl) here.