Posts by Miss Rosen

Flurina Rothenberger: Just as Dandy As You Are

Posted on August 6, 2015

Photograph by
Flurina Rothenberger

I have as yet to meet Flurina Rothenberger in person, but from her photographs I feel as though I know something of her. Through her eye, I have see the way she looks at the world, the way she raises her camera to capture a fraction of a moment in time for us to consider at our leisure. From her photographs, I have a sense of style, grace, and poise alongside a wit that gently enjoys the beauty of life, a sensibility that gives one a feeling of being at home in the world, wherever she may go. When I first received her book, project I love to dress like I am coming from somewhere and I have a place to go (Edition Patrick Frey), I was absolutely beside myself. What better than a pocket paperback of Africa to gaze at all day? The people, the landscape, the streets, the style, the feeling of art, culture, and life. Flurina’s photographs are about a sense of being as just as dandy as you are.

Miss Rosen: Can you please speak about your early experience in art, and some of the early influences that inspired you to create art ? How did growing up in Africa influence your aesthetic sensibilities?

Flurina Rothenberger: I grew up in Côte d’Ivoire, in an hybridized environment driven by the genuine remix of tradition and contemporary. The skills, crafts and creative inventions I was exposed to weren’t of self-fulfilling beauty, they beared witness to a specific art of life. Nothing was meaningless and in spite of the high aesthetic value served a practical benefit. Be it the toys my friends fabricated from scratch or the enigmatic result of a specific weaving technique, the beauty always emerged from a thought materialized in a unique practical shape of expression. It may be a coincidence but my sisters and I all ended up in similar fields of activity and each one of us has remained strongly influenced in her design by references from West Africa. Most likely our visual perception was sensitized by growing up in a surrounding infiltrated by the genuine presence of someone always inventing and crafting something. I don’t consider myself an artist. I’m simply a photographer attracted to places where people don’t operate within a single, but a quadruple consciousness.

Was there a point where you realized that making art would be your life’s calling? We love to know the moment when artists realized there was no turning back, and they were committed to pursuing art.

I never had a sudden strike of insight but there was a sort of turning point. After moving back to Switzerland I had trouble settling in. I felt lost and disconnected. A short introduction to the photo lab triggered something. The particular atmosphere shook my senses wide awake. It became a place of comfort, wild experiments and most importantly of crucial awareness that a certain image is one choice among endless other options. I guess in a sense the darkroom sparked both: my first real commitment to visual expression and the belief that images can challenge thoughts.

Can you speak about your work in Africa: how does working as a photographer give you access to people, places, and perspectives you might not otherwise reach as a “civilian” (so to speak)? What do you find to be the most rewarding aspect of traveling with a camera?

As a photographer I have my individual way of looking into things. This naturally also determines the nature of access I reach out for. I tend to seek and find a welcoming door if people understand my motif and commitment to sharing life. In my experience every photograph and every project begins with trust, insight and integrity. As for what I love about traveling with a camera in Africa, is that my ideas aren’t triggered by life in theory. They wash up almost physically in the bus, on the street, in a conversation, handed out like a palpable invitation. In most places people have a strong opinion about images and it’s far from uncommon to communicate issues visually. Considering this background both is true: approaching people and situations as a photographer often results in opportunities of close proximity, the camera though also exposes my incentive to critical questioning. I appreciate both of these aspects in Africa very much. If the former is the palpable invitation, the latter is the reality check of my intention and approach.

Can you speak about the challenges of photographing in various nations?

I see two main challenges when I photograph in other nations than my own: One, the fear that my pictures could create a simplistic distorted reflection of the place, the situation or the individual. Second, finding the appropriate balance between familiar and exotic, a visual language which stirs something inside the viewer all the while remaining unpretentious. I keep those two aspects in mind as a guideline while I choose work, photograph and edit. It’s a high set bar and in some terms idealistic. Another thing I’ve learned from portraying the fates of very different people : no matter how committed I remain to the task of showing lives and subjects in their legitimate complexity, it’ll always result in a perspective tainted by my own cultural mentality and story, be this conscious or not.

Photograph by
Flurina Rothenberger

How do you, as a photographer, work to avoid the more obvious visual tropes and reductive narratives that the Western media often associates with third world nations?

I wish my work was fully free of the kind of images Binyavanga Wainana labeled as “poverty pornography”. It certainly isn’t. I’ve fallen into that trap just like most Western photographers. Mass media operates in terms of which message sells fastest and cheapest to the widest audience possible. Obviously this isn’t the best equipped vessel to explain a context from a place with great diversity and complexity. Yet it is mass media which has significantly shaped our collective and increasingly global visual memory. A a photographer I’m aware that the viewer assigns a certain message to a descriptive clue and will prioritize this one from the overall picture. The devastating aspect though is that the audience grows bored and sated by topics due to the way they’re pictured, when just these should urgently stir us to take action.

I try to follow a working style and ethics which considers this fait acompli. If I get carried away in the excitement of the moment, I’ll censor those images later in the edit. At times it’s frustrating since I submit the actual content in which the photograph was created to precisely those very rules I question in their legitimacy to condition how we perceive things.

There is a photograph in my recent book showing a four year-old girl in Moçambique. Sent to help her sisters fetch water from the well, she marches down a long empty road. In my consciousness this image elicits a chuckle and reflects the amazing maturity, singular determination, flexibility and courage I’ve experienced countless times with children deprived of certain opportunities. On the counterpart this image belongs to the risky ones. It embeds several of the earlier mentioned indications, a large audience is conditioned to associate with poverty, struggle and vulnerability. It’s not an easy decision which one to give in to: the origin context of the image or the general public’s eye.

I solve the struggle by getting advise from someone who understands my motive but doesn’t share the specific story of the pictures origin. For my latest project I love to dress like I am coming from somewhere and I have a place to go, I chose a tight collaboration with Hammer, a graphic design studio founded by my sister Sereina Rothenberger and David Schatz. I handed them a large chunk of my archive and they curated the final selection along with the edit and illustrations of quotes. Sometimes it’s best to let others kill a few darlings in the benefit of a fresh and fair view.

What do you think that the photograph does that no other medium can do? How do you find people respond to your interest in photographing them?

Photography is a medium of great generosity. It can easily stretch it’s boundaries between dream and reality giving up neither one nor the other. It suggest optional views on a complex, yet unpretentious level. It is both, humble and powerful. A photograph sets our thoughts into motion by taming life to stand still. Most cultures and societies have their own popular imagery which also influences how people respond to the medium. In a way by taking a picture of someone in this context, the portrait is reciprocal, tainted by both backgrounds. Mine and the subjects. I enjoy that for my deep belief that how we want to be seen, points out the reality we’re shaped by. I make my presence and intentions obvious and in exchange, with few exceptions, people respond with positive and active complicity. I love the intimate moment of unspoken consent, when the other suggests a pose, changes the setting with small arrangements or simply agrees by addressing the camera with an assertive presence.

What did you find to be the most inspiring aspects of photographing the people and places of Africa ?

The diversity of scenarios and the relationship people generally entertain with the medium, exhausts the whole range of photography’s pliable and enigmatic nature. It’s all there woven into the pattern of every day life: the flickering of value and meaning, the shift of visual boundaries, the remix of traditional and contemporary, the fusion of carefully arranged and incredibly improvised. In Africa, my wrestling thoughts are put at ease, my fears untangled and my senses wide awake. This alone is very inspiring!

I like that in most areas and African countries I’ve been to, images act in a different and in a way stronger narrative context than I experience in Europe. A response to this is the individual ownership people tend to take on, when being portrayed. Even now in times of social media there is a particular poised nature of self-perception most Africans I meet from very different backgrounds seem to share. I rarely experience fidgeting, restlessness or any other lack of confidence. If someone agrees to be photographed, regardless the scenario, they will meet me and the camera with doubtless presence. Intuitively or consciously adding their intention and vision to mine. It’s one of the many stimulating aspects I love, admire and at times envy a bit.

Visit FLURINA ROTHENBERGER

Photograph by
Flurina Rothenberger

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Fashion, Photography

Meryl Meisler: Purgatory & Paradise

Posted on August 1, 2015

Plaid Suit and Cadillac in Chelsea, NY, NY, May 1978.

The 1970s was an age of innocent decadence, the time before the fall, a time where the country cracked open and out of it came creatures with big hair and vibrant personality, the kind of characters that have that old school je ne sais quoi that makes their shenanigans a delight to watch.

Take Judi Jupiter as she weighs the situation in the new book by Meryl Meisler, Purgatory & Paradise: SASSY ‘70s Suburbia & The City (Bizarre Publishing). It was July 1977, Westhampton, NY, and Miss Jupiter was taking her top off as she weighed big nuggets of weed on a triple beam balance scale. She looks at the camera through a thicket of bangs all but obscuring her eyes. She’s but one of hundreds of subjects Meisler came upon in her travels across Long Island and NYC, subjects that were outrageously stylish and sexy.

As Meisler writes in the introduction, “This book encapsulates my coming of age: The Bronx, suburbia, The Mystery Club, dance lessons, Girl Scouts, the Rockettes, the circus, school, mitzvahs, proms, feminism, Disco, Go-Go, Jewish and LGBT Pride, the New York streets, friendship, family and love. I had to photograph it to make sense of it all. To hold onto the time, to release and share it, to put it in perspective and move on. It was sassy, but also sweet, and so was I.”

Read the Full Story at CRAVE ONLINE

Judi Jupiter Weighs the Situation, Westhampton, NY, July 1977.

Street Ventriloquist, NY, NY, July 1979.

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Brooklyn, Fashion, Manhattan, Photography

Christopher Makos: White Trash Uncut

Posted on July 30, 2015

Debbie Harry. Photo by Christopher Makos

New York, 1977. It began with a book, a paperback with black and white photographs of the punk scene. The book was titled White Trash and it featured the boldest of the boldface names: Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Debbie Harry, Halston, Andy Warhol, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Divine, and John Waters. Add to that a splash of Man Ray, Tennessee Williams, and Marilyn Chambers, and you’ve nailed it. White Trash, Christopher Makos’ photography book, is the place where pop meets pulp, perfectly defining the D.I.Y. ethos of the times. The book has become a seminal volume of the times and now sells for upwards of $500.

However, the original edition is a paperback, and paperbacks are not designed to last. They’re disposable (like, say, white trash). And if you crack the spine too wide, the entire thing might fall apart in your hands. We are fortunate, then, that Glitterati Incorporated has released a revised and expanded edition in hardcover.

White Trash Uncut, Makos’ updated monograph, is a lavish affair. This tall, slim volume features the photographs uncropped (unlike the 1977 edition). It also features a selection of never-before-published photographs of Grace Jones, among others. Included throughout the book is the use of silver, making the pages come alive. Everything about the book is luxurious, and in that way it becomes a statement of the times. Punk has passed; that New York is long gone. But what lives in its place are photographs, memories, and stories.

Read the Full Story at CRAVE ONLINE

David Croland and Grace Jones wearing a Le Jardin shirt. New York. Photo by Chrostopher Makos

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Crave, Fashion, Manhattan, Photography

Danny Clinch: Still Moving

Posted on July 17, 2015

Photograph: Bruce Springsteen, 2007 (©Danny Clinch).

“Still is still moving to me,” Willie Nelson said, a beautiful sentiment befitting the photograph itself. A fraction of a second frozen in time, forevermore, is the ephemeral made eternal. This is a kind of magic, something more than art. It is an artifact, a document, witness to history as it unfolds. The photograph must stand the test of time; it must endure so that it can speak to future generations.

Music photography is a beautiful paradox: the silence is deafening, yet enveloping. That which is sound is now purely visual, distilled in a single moment that delivers all the highs and lows, all the rhythm and blues, as the crowd goes wild and we becomes one. It is this intensity that the photographer seeks, this moment when we are lost and found that we are truly present.

Danny Clinch is a master of the form, seamlessly moving on and off stage with his instrument, the camera guiding his way. More than 200 of his seminal photographs are collected in Still Moving (Abrams Books), along with an essay by Bruce Springsteen, who explains, “When Danny Clinch and I clicked as photographer/subject, it was because somewhere deep inside we had he same points of reference—the same songs and movies dancing in our heads. With each click of the shutter he was scrolling through my record collection, referencing my influences, searching for the same magic. I could feel he’d been mesmerized by the same images of our heroes that made me want to be a musician and that made me, during our shoots, tilt my head down a little (like Elvis), or move to the left into a half shadow (like Dylan) or out into light (like, like…?).”

Read the Full Story at CRAVE ONLINE.

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Music, Photography

Arlene Gottfried: Mommie

Posted on July 3, 2015

Photograph by Arlene Gottfried

Photographs by Arlene Gottfried

Last summer I had the great pleasure of speaking with Arlene Gottfried at length, well, listening mostly, listening and asking questions and then listening again as Arlene spoke of her life behind the camera. A second generation New Yorker, Arlene has born witness to the people that have made this city one of the greatest places on earth. Her photographs never fail to delight and astound with their distinctive blend of compassion, style, and grace, with a knowing nod, a giggle, and a wink. This is New York, after all.

Arlene is unassuming yet powerful. The intensity of her presence can best be felt when looking at her photograph or listening to her sing gospel. I remember hearing her in church on several occasions, overwhelmed and overjoyed by the spirit she channels. It is this spirit, this very soul, that makes Arlene one of the most compelling artists I know. And so it was with great honor that last summer I interviewed Arlene about her life, her family, and her work for her forthcoming book, Mommie (powerHouse Books).

I remember seeing the mock up for Mommie at powerHouse years ago, once again overwhelmed by the depth and profundity of her work. To be honest, I was not ready for this level of truth, this intense bond between generations of women, all flowers from the same root. Mommie is Arlene’s fourth book with powerHouse, and perhaps the most personal of an incredibly intimate body of work.

As I listened to Arlene speak, I realized she was a woman who has kept a great many private matters just so, and with Mommie she was sharing more than her memories, she was baring witness as the family historian. As time passes, we come to terms with the eternal circle of life and death and birth once more. With Mommie, we quietly observe, we feel, and we think; Arlene’s photographs have the cumulative effect of softly sinking into your body and changing the very nature of your being.

In that same way, the book is an object unto itself, an object to be held, much like a family album. powerHouse would like to use real upholstery fabric to wrap the book’s boards (the front cover, spine, and back cover) and has decided to create a Indie GoGo account to support the production costs. In order to share Arlene’s story, they asked me to interview her a couple of months ago, and this time, Arlene sang “Amazing Grace,” a moment that be stilled my soul.

The video is now live, and the Indie GoGo campaign has begun. We invite you to visit the campaign at MOMMIE, and support the project. Among the rewards offered are Arlene’s first three powerHouse Books: Bacalaitos & Fireworks, Midnight, and Sometimes Overwhelming, each one a treasury of New York City history, street photography, and style, each one a love letter from the bottom of her heart.

Photograph by Arlene Gottfried

Photograph by Arlene Gottfried

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Manhattan, Photography, Women

Andy Warhol: The Complete Commissioned Record Covers 1949-1987

Posted on July 1, 2015

Melodic Magic, Vol 1, 1953. All images © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The album cover is an icon of the past, of an age when vinyl was something to be collected. The 12 x 12 inch surface was a canvas ripe for exploration, the square format offering infinite interpretations. The album cover, such as it was, provided a space for the artist to put us in the mood, to seduce us with images, words, ideas. It offered a space for contemplation, as the record spun round, creating a delicious interplay between audio and visual experience of the work. As a result, album covers, in certain cases, have become icons themselves.

ndy Warhol designed his first record cover in 1949; clearly he sensed the value of the medium, for he launched his career phoning record companies and soliciting them. Over the years, until his death in 1987, he created more than fifty covers which are presented beautifully in Andy Warhol: The Complete Commissioned Record Covers 1949-1987, Catalogue Raisonné, 2nd Edition by Paul Maréchal (Prestel). Produced at nearly actual size, with photographs of the original works, along with entries detailing the story of each album, this catalogue is a compendium of sumptuous delight.

Warhol’s gift for blurring the lines between high and low art and be felt in each and every illustration he created. His best known works, the covers of The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967) and the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers (1971), appear alongside lesser known works such as Monk featuring Thelonious Monk with Sonny Rollins and Frank Foster (1954) Giant Size $1.57 Each, released in conjunction with the exhibition The Popular Image at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art (1963). Taken together as a group, we can follow the thread of Warhol’s transformation from illustrator to artist, his visual vocabulary becoming more exact and extreme as his ideas take hold.

Read the Full Story at CRAVE ONLINE

Monk, 1954. All images © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Crave, Manhattan, Music

Fresh Dressed: Directed by Sacha Jenkins

Posted on June 29, 2015

CNN Films: Fresh Dressed- Classic street style; Brooklyn New York, circa 1986.
Photograph by Jamel Shabazz

“Being fresh is more important than having money. I only wanted money so I could be fresh,” Kanye West says with the utmost conviction. Dressed in all white, Kanye is sitting in on the deck of a beach house, somewhere where the skies are blue and the water is clean, and drops bon mots like this for the camera. Yeezy is just one of the many moguls, masterminds, and pioneers in Sacha Jenkins’ documentary film, Fresh Dressed, which premiered at the SVA Theater, New York, on June 18 and releases nationwide on June 26, 2015.

The theater was a who’s who of legends who created the form of Hip Hop that took the world by storm. As KRS-One said, “Rap is something you do. Hip Hop is something you live.” This way of being was very much in evidence in the crowd, filled with the artists, musicians, and designers who have defined Hip Hop style. It was a veritable who’s who of fashion visionaries including Dapper Dan, Karl Kani, Mark Ecko, April Walker, Shirt King Phade, and Jorge Fabel Pabon, among others, people who revolutionized the look, feel, and availability of mainstream apparel as well as couture pieces.

Nasir Jones, executive producer of the film, was sitting in the audience as Sacha Jenkins took the stage before the screening began to welcome the audience and say a few words. Wearing a Public School shorts-suit, bow tie, and plaid shirt with red kicks, Jenkins was handed the mic and asked, “You know my first question, right? Is Queens in the house?” The call was answered enthusiastically by the audience. Jenkins did roll call, then he broke it down, introducing Nas by saying, “He went to the same shitty junior high school as I did…The guidance counselors told me the best way to make it in life was vocational jobs. None had any expectations of us.”

Read the Full Story at CRAVE

CNN Films: Fresh Dressed- The jean jacket was graffiti art’s first canvas. B boys on the street, Brooklyn circa 1983
Photograph by Jamel Shabazz

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Bronx, Brooklyn, Crave, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography

The Way We Wore: Black Style Then

Posted on June 19, 2015

1978, Newark, New Jersey. Douglas Says.

Style is a statement of individuality, of identity, and of pride. Style is the great art of living manifest by our desire to beautify, to adorn, and to express a great inner being in tangible form. Style most readily finds itself expressed through fashion, hair, and makeup, though it is also evident in the very act of documenting one’s self. To have style is to give unto the world, to share it not only in the present tense but to capture it for future generations to enjoy.

In The Way We Wore: Black Style Then (Glitterati Incorporated), Michael McCollom chronicles African-Americans fashion from the 1940s through today. Featuring snapshots of over 150 black men and women’s most unforgettable “style moments”, The Way We Wore includes personal photographs taken from the author’s own family and circle of friends, a circle of 100 fashion insiders, outsiders, and beautiful people that includes Oprah Winfrey, James Baldwin, Carmen de Lavallade, Iman, Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks, Tracy Reese, Patrick Kelly, Kimora Lee, Bobby Short, Bethann Hardison, Tookie Smith, and Portia LaBeija, among others.

The late, great Geoffrey Holder eloquently observes in the book’s foreword, “One should not enter a room and expect ambiance; one should enter a room and become it. Those that grace the pages of The Way We Wore took that concept and ran with it. Through the reader will witness the evolution—and, in some cases, the faux pas—of fashion and design, it is in the personal flair that an individual bestows to each outfit that creates the look…. Like a yearbook, you will come back to this work again and again. Though you may not know the people personally, you will recognize them. Michael has carefully chosen pictures and people that exhibit the historical framework of African-American influence on fashion, design, and culture.”

Read the Full Story at CRAVE ONLINE

1978, Newark, New Jersey. Linwood Allen, Designer.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Escape the Cage

Posted on May 3, 2015

Butterfly (Andy Warhol)

Genius is eternal patience.
~Michelangelo

Categories: Art

Salut ! NYC, 1981 Nominated for Webby Award

Posted on April 8, 2015

SAMO IS DEAD, New York, NY, 1981. Photograph by Robert Herman

We are thrilled to announce that NYC, 1981 has been nominated for a Webby Award in the category of Website: Blog – Cultural, alongside the likes of Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Pitchfork, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

NYC, 1981 is a culture website inspired by the film “A Most Violent Year,” and a TWBE x A24 production. For the site, I had the great privilege of interviewing Charlie Ahearn, John Ahearn, Barry Blinderman, Joyce Chasan, Joe Conzo, Jane Dickson, Ricky Flores, Arlene Gottfried, Robert Herman, Douglas Kirkland, Joe Lewis, Christopher Makos, Toby Old, Clayton Patterson, and Jamel Shabazz. You can check out these interviews and more at NYC, 1981

We would like to encourage you to vote, and to spread the word, so that this great, independent site dedicated to New York City culture, politics, and art in 1981 will receive the recognition it deserves.

Vote HERE.

Categories: 1980s, Art, Books, Bronx, Brooklyn, Fashion, Graffiti, Manhattan, Music, Painting, Photography

Peter Mishara: Bronx 79

Posted on February 11, 2015

Bronx 79. I remember it well. Diana Vreeland once said something to the effect of the first five years of your life influence your sensibility and your taste because the world makes a powerful impression on your soul. It is those early years, when you are just navigating the world, that time and place are one and the same. This is style, in the truest sense of the word. Who What Where When Why & How? That’s what it’s all about.

Bronx 79, that’s where Peter Mishara comes in, with a trailer of the same name that you can view HERE. It takes us back into time, to a world so long ago that all that remains are the photographs, the footage, and the people who lived to tell.

Miss Rosen: What was the inspiration for Bronx 79 ? What made you decide to develop a documentary film to explore this place in time ? What are some of the ideas and themes that you are exploring in the film ?

Peter Mishara: Quite simply, Bronx 79 grew out of a lifelong love of the music and the culture. Hip-hop has been some part of my life from a very young age and something that has grown with me as I have and has connected me to people and places and experiences that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. The interest to me was twofold – one, I was born in NYC in 1976 and I’ve always grappled with the sense of nostalgia that I have for that era, not of my own specific memories but more of a time and place that is no longer. And two, even when I was a young kid listening to EMPD and Slick Rick and the like I still was curious to the origins of the culture – who were these cats that came before? So stuff like Crash Crew and Flash were getting a lot of play in my Walkman. My first screenplay that I ever wrote was a short film based on a Masta Ace story (with his blessing of course) that appeared in a 1993 issue of the Source called “Sleeping Snakes” which was about graffiti writers in the early 80s. In ’98 I turned it into my senior thesis at Temple University when I went there for undergrad (a trailer is HERE). In any event, my desire to accurately portray this era on film has been with me a long while.

This is the main idea that I want to explore – you’ve got a culture that was effectively on its own for almost 6 years, from ’73 to ’79, with its own constellation of stars, artists all within a 50 block or so radius. In today’s hyperconnected world, that’s an impossibility – that shit would be on Twitter tomorrow and by the end of the week be played out, but again we’re talking 6 years here – crazy, and not to mention set against the backdrop of one of the single greatest collapses of urban infrastructure in the modern history of the world. Its become cliché to say nowadays, but people forget how much NYC was in freefall at the time and there was serious consideration that it might not ever recover. All that to say that these kids were not expected to make any contribution to larger society, quite the opposite, they were in many ways abandoned and forgotten. Instead of being forgotten however, they laid the foundation to the greatest youth movement of the past 40 years. So they’ve got six years to cook the culture, let it percolate and establish rules and style. Then boom, this one 12” comes out – Rappers Delight – and changes everything. Literally, its BRD and ARD in hip-hop history – what does that mean to the constellation of stars and fans? Its almost like the introduction of sound in film, you’ve got some talent that’s able to make the switch, but a lot aren’t able to, and just like silent film, you’ve got a lot of those amazing pieces of art that are lost to time. That’s what compels me about this and what I want to explore in Bronx 79.

Who are the subjects who will be featured in the film ? What made you select them ? What expertise does each of them bring to the story?

In this proof-of-concept trailer, you’ve got 3 people interviewed – two people that were there at the beginnings, DJ Disco Wiz and Joe Conzo and a journalist, Jeff Chang to help give a little context. All three were incredible talents and I was lucky (with the help of a certain Miss Rosen) to get them on screen. Wiz wrote the amazing memoir It’s Just Begun (which served as inspiration for the main music choice of the trailer), and one of the things that’s fascinating about him is that during “BRD” he went upstate to do a bid and he missed the actual shift that the culture experienced, so that the change for him when he got back home was far more palatable. Joe is an incredible dude, just a kid when he took these pictures that would be some of the only records of this era and talking to him you can still see that same guy in there somewhere. The way he talks about that time you just feel like that you’re there with him. And Jeff was fantastic just in terms of his research and his knowledge of this specific time and place. I was very lucky to interview them as the basis for this trailer.

I do have a rather extensive wish-list of people that I’d love to get on film. Of course the “holy trinity” of Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, and Grandmaster Flash. You’ve got musicians such as Grandmaster Caz, The Furious Five, Charlie Chase, Kurtis Blow, Sha Rock, Buzy Bee Starski, Melle Mel, the list goes on and definitely talk to the cats that were on the front lines of this seismic shift – the Sugarhill Gang (RIP Big Hank Bank). If I could be quite honest, my biggest issue with the proof-of-concept trailer as it is, is that it doesn’t include any b-boying or graff, this is not an oversight, just a factor of production limitations. So that being said, b-boys such as Crazy Legs, Ken Swift, Jimmy D, Lenny Len, Chino “Action” Lopez, Popmaster Fabel, etc. And graff artists Lee, Lady Pink, Futura, Zephyr, T-Kid, Seen, Phase II just to name a very few. As a side note, its pretty interesting that what is considered the core “pillars” of hip-hop started out separately from one another and became inextricably linked in hindsight, but this is an element that would be worth exploring more. And finally, I’d like to interview people from that time that aren’t “names” but were avid fans of the scene. Jeff Chang has a great passage in his book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop with Cindy Campbell, sister of Kool Herc, whose desire for a new wardrobe for going back to school was the impetus for what is widely considered the first hip-hop jam in 1973. I’d love to interview people such as her to get a completely different perspective on what that world was actually like.

I love the original footage and photographs included in the film. What were some of the challenges in sourcing authentic materials from the era ?

The challenge is that there isn’t any! Well, that might be going a bit far, but the reality is that actual archival footage from that time is very few and very far between. First and foremost, Joe Conzo allowing me to use his photographs was huge – they are pretty much the only document from that era that directly shows that scene. The other first degree archival footage exists as personal photographs and in rare instances Super 8mm film, all of which I’d love to feature.

The other main resource is either a handful of narrative films and a few documentaries. The internet obviously is a great resource in terms of listing the films, but almost anything online is horrible quality. I strove for highest quality as possible, and I’ve been collecting DVDs for the past decade or so to pull from. What is exciting is that these movies, such as Fort Apache, the Bronx and Wolfen were shot on film and could be potentially uprezzed to HD, a possibility which is completely dependent on availability and cost. There’s a great blog run by filmmaker Jonathan Hertzberg (http://knifeinthehead.blogspot.ca/) where he creates these supercuts of what he terms “Dirty Old New York” which was an invaluable resource.

The challenge is a great one to have and forces you to find new ways to show what it was actually like then. In an ideal world, I’d like to bring to life some of these stories either through animation (Vaughn Bode and particularly Ralph Bakshi’s Coonskin are huge influences) or through live-action recreations. Both techniques should feel like a modern interpretation of era specific styles, meaning they should feel like a time capsule of the ’70s.

What are your plans for developing a longer length film?

Great question. On one hand, the proof-of-concept trailer were some ideas that I’ve had in my head for a long time and eventually I just wanted to get them out in the world. From that perspective, the experience has been invaluable in terms of allowing me to focus on what works and what doesn’t. For me, it comes down to storytelling – people that were there and lived it and through their stories are able to take you back to that time. There tends to be a romanticizing of what New York was like back then which doesn’t interest me. That’s why I started the trailer with Wiz’s great quote, “This wasn’t like no love pow-wow, this was the streets.” So basically I want to hear more of these stories, get them on film and take it from there.

Categories: 1970s, Art, Bronx, Music, Photography