Photographer Edward Grazda began his career in New York city, back in the 1970s. During the early days of his career, which now includes work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MoMA and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, to name just a few, he would also take pictures of New York. It was just something he did, an extension of living there.

“I didn’t plan it to be a project at all,” he said. “For the most part I didn’t print them at the time.”

But a few years ago he thought about those old contact sheets and went to have a look. The result of this second look is a new book called Mean Streets NYC 1970-1985, an artistic time capsule of the city published in October.

Mr. Grazda is currently a resident of Chilmark, having moved here six years ago from New York, a shift from the city that never sleeps to the land of being in bed by Chilmark midnight (8 p.m.). On Friday, Jan. 19 he will give a talk and book signing at Pathways Artspace, 9 State Road in Chilmark. The event begins at 6:30 p.m.

Mr. Grazda said the book includes 100 photographs. “It all came together quite quickly,” he said. “The title, everything.”

The evening also features a preview screening of The Ravenite: A Very Antisocial Social Club, by Dennis Mohr and Alec Wilkinson, a documentary about the Ravenite social club in Little Italy, once home to the Gambino crime family. Mr. Wilkinson, a New Yorker writer, lived across the street for a time in the 1980s, when crime boss John Gotti was making headlines as the Teflon Don for staying out of prison.

Many of Mr. Grazda’s photographs are included in the movie. But not photographs of the social club or Mr. Gotti.

“That wasn’t something you did,” Mr. Grazda said.