Posts from the “1980s” Category

Debbie Harry: Punk’s Platinum Blonde Bombshell

Posted on August 12, 2020

*Richard McCaffrey. Debbie Harry of Blondie performs live at The Winterland Ballroom in 1977 in San Francisco, California.*

After learning she had been adopted, Debbie Harry would often dream her real mother was Marilyn Monroe, herself a foster child who became the quintessential Hollywood bombshell, radiating an intoxicating blend of vulnerability, seduction, and charm every time she looked at the camera.

“I felt that Marilyn was also playing a character, the proverbial dumb blonde with the little-girl voice and big-girl body, and that there was a lot of smarts behind the act,” Harry wrote in Face It: A Memoir. “My character in Blondie was partly a visual homage to Marilyn, and partly a statement about the good old double standard.”

At 14, Harry began dying her hair, going through a dozen colors but always returning to timeless glamour of platinum blonde. In 1965, Harry, then 20, moved to New York City and rented an apartment on St. Marks Place for a mere $67 a month. She worked as a go-go dancer, Playboy Bunny, and waitress at Max’s Kansas City before she found her true calling: rock star.

Read the Full Story at Jacques Marie Mage

*Gie Knaeps. Debbie Harry, Blondie, Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands, September 21, 1977.*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Fashion, Jacques Marie Mage, Music

Sergio Purtell: Love’s Labour

Posted on August 10, 2020

In 1973, at the tender age of 18, Sergio Purtell fled his hometown of Santiago, Chile, for the United States. The decision came after General Augusto Pinochet and Admiral José Merino lead a coup d’état, killing the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende.

Once situated in his new home, Purtell began studying photography, going on to receive a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and an MFA from Yale. “Photography had the ability to sustain time itself – it was to be discovered not constructed,” Purtell says. “One could use one’s intuition to drive one’s motivation. Suddenly the world started to make sense to me.”

In the summer of 1979, Purtell decided to make a pilgrimage to Europe to discover the birthplace of Western art, an annual practice he would continue well into the mid-’80s. He purchased a Eurail pass to travel the continent at length, staying in seedy motels, visiting local cafes, beaches and bars, and amassing a glorious archive of his adventures, just published in the new book Love’s Labour (Stanley/Barker).

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Huck, Photography

Beyond Heaven: Chicago House Party Flyers – Volume II, From 1981-1992

Posted on July 24, 2020

On July 12, 1979, 50,000 people descended upon Comiskey Park inChicago to attend “Disco Demolition Night”. The promotional stunt, organised by Major League Baseball, saw a crate of disco records get blown up, and the field destroyed. The “Disco Sucks” sentiment was fueled by the global success of disco music; a predominantly Black and gay art form that triggered the worst impulses of white cultural hegemony.

Once the mainstream turned its back on the culture, disco went back to its roots, and a new style began to emerge in Chicago’s nightclubs. This was the beginning of house music, which got its name from the Warehouse, a members-only gay club for Black men helmed by legendary DJ Frankie Knuckles.

“Knuckles and native Chicagoan Ron Hardy began adding their own twists and turns, mixing in Italo disco, synth, soul, R&B, and even rock occasionally, until their sounds began to find their way outside of these walls,” says Mario ‘Live It Up’ Luna, author, and Brandon Johnson, publisher of the new book Beyond Heaven: Chicago House Party Flyers – Volume II, From 1981-1992 (Almighty & Insane).

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Get Your Ass On The Dance Floor Centrum ’85*

Categories: 1980s, Huck, Music

Stanley Stellar: Night, Life

Posted on July 21, 2020

As a young gay boy growing up in Flatbush, Brooklyn, Stanley Stellar always felt alone. “I didn’t have any friends,” he tells AnOther. “I would go up to the roof of my building, sitting there by myself, and thinking about the future. My greatest joys were looking at stacks of magazines. Images became my friends.”

After studying graphic design at Parsons in the early 1960s, Stellar began his career as an editorial art director designing magazines and coffee-table books. “I’m a child of all media,” he says. “Inside my head are all the images of the second half of the 20th century. I was very aware of what was being done and who was doing it, along with the history of photography. After seeing so many other people’s work I wanted to take my own pictures.”

In 1976, Stellar got his first professional camera and set forth on a mission to document Manhattan’s West Village, which was flourishing during the early years of the Gay Liberation Movement. “When I came out, the gay world was on the street. If you were a young gay man you had very few choices as to what to do, how to meet people, have sex or friends. I found Greenwich Avenue and Christopher Street; for so many years that was the spot,” Stellar says.

“I was invited to gay men’s apartments and seeing what their lives were like. It made a real impression on me; I needed to record us in ways that were not necessarily commercial. Images of men in society meant GQ or porn magazines on 42nd Street – that was it. I wanted to do what I had not seen.”

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, AnOther, Art, Photography

Gaechter+Clahsen: Fünf Finger Föhn Frisur

Posted on November 20, 2019

Long before the Internet made nearly everything instantly accessible, beauty salons used photography to advertise and promote the styles of the day. Part headshot, part beauty photo, these photographs fell squarely into the realm of commercial photography.

Utilizing studio lighting and a basic backdrop, women became mannequins in the truest sense of the word. Here they modeled hairdos, their faces made up with “natural cosmetics” and their shoulders bare — nothing to distract the viewer from the focus: hair, hair, hair!

The photographs often hung in windows until they discolored from exposure to the sun, or were framed and hung indoors where they could be protected. Customers often tore them from magazines and brought them in to suggest the look they wanted to go for, then brought them home and carefully them to mirrors so that they could painstakingly achieve this look on their own.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Photography

Janette Beckman: Beat Positive

Posted on November 15, 2019

Group portrait of various hip hop and rapping artists, from left (bottom row): Tony ‘Master T’ Young, Big Drew, and K Rock. Sitting upon Big Drew’s shoulders is MC Lyte, 1990. New York. (Photo by Janette Beckman/Getty Images) Photos Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery

When Janette Beckman learned the “New York Scratch and Rap Revue,” the first Hip Hop showcase in the UK was headed to London, she immediately offered to shoot it for Melody Maker. The year was 1982, and the culture was as fresh as the crease down the front of a pair of Lee jeans. The concert proved to be a turning point in Beckman’s life.

“Everyone was on stage together at the same time: Afrika Bambaataa was on the turntables. Fab 5 Freddy was on the mic, DONDI and FUTURE were making a mural. The Rock Steady Crew was breakdancing. The Double Dutch girls did their thing,” Beckman says.

“It was a Renaissance moment for me. I was used to people in leather jackets thrashing it out on stage and here were these people making art, music, poetry, and dance in this wild, crazy, creative thing.”

Read the Full Story at The Luupe

The Ultramagnetic MCs pose outside on a New York city street, 1989. (Photo by Janette Beckman/Getty Images) Photos Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Music, Photography, The Luupe

Show Me the Picture: The Story of Jim Marshall

Posted on November 14, 2019

Johnny Cash off the bus at Folsom State Prison, Folsom, California, 1968 Photography by Jim Marshall, taken from Jim Marshall: Show Me the Picture by Amelia Davis, published by Chronicle Books 2019

In March 1984, Michelle Margetts, a 19-year-old journalism student at San Francisco State University, met Jim Marshall (1936-2010) at a bar in downtown San Francisco, to interview him for a ‘Where Are They Now?’ assignment. Marshall, who had famously shot Johnny Cash flipping the bird during his historic 1969 performance at San Quentin State Prison and Jimi Hendrix burning his guitar at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, was, in the words of Annie Leibovitz, “the rock ‘n’ roll photographer”.

But Marshall, then 45, was down on his luck after being arrested on a gun bust in 1983 and doing work release to avoid prison time. “When I met him I found him hideous: a malevolent gnome,” Margetts recalls of the man who would become a short-term boyfriend and lifelong friend. Given the opportunity to talk, Marshall poured out his heart, revealing the deep vulnerabilities that lay beneath his gruff exterior. Then, just before it was to be published, Marshall sabotaged the entire thing and the story disappeared.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Restaurant in Harlem, New York City, 1963 Photography by Jim Marshall, taken from Jim Marshall: Show Me the Picture by Amelia Davis, published by Chronicle Books 2019

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, AnOther Man, Art, Books, Music, Photography

The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture

Posted on November 14, 2019

J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Untitled (Suku Banana Onididi), from the series Hairstyles, 1974 (printed 2009). Courtesy of The Walther Collection and Galerie Magnin-A, Paris

S. J. Moodley, [Two women wearing Western attire], 1981. Courtesy of The Walther Collection

As European imperialists set forth to colonise the globe, they took everything they could – including images of indigenous peoples forced to pose for photographs against their will. They made, sold, and distributed images, often objectifying and fetishising the subjects. This is where our story begins.

A new exhibition, The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture, features more than 100 works drawn from The Walther Collection to trace the history of female agency in photographic form. Guest curated by Sandrine Collard, the show features works by Malick Sidibé, Seydou Keïta, David Goldblatt, J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Yto Barrada,Zanele Muholi, and Lebohang Kganye, exploring the role of women as both subject and photographer.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko, Nonkululeko, from the series Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder, 2003. Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Africa, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography, Women

Steven Arnold: Heavenly Bodies

Posted on November 5, 2019

Heal-a-zation Swathe a la Glob-Ba, silver gelatin print, 1985. The Steven Arnold Museum and Archives

Artist, photographer, filmmaker, and “queer mystic” Steven F. Arnold (1943–1994) is a quintessential icon of our times, a revolutionary figure whose ideas about gender fluidity, radical acceptance, and non-binary consciousness, first realised in the late 1960s, are just now becoming part of the cultural conversation.

Protégé of Salvador Dalí and shared encounters with Debbie Harry, Anjelica Huston, Antonio Lopez, and Joni Mitchell, Arnold seamlessly weaved celebrity, glamour, and camp theatricality with ancient ritual, two-spirit philosophy, and eastern art into a majestic Baroque-inspired tableaux that will be on view atFahey/Klein Gallery during Paris Photo next week.

“Steven was a prophet,” says Vishnu Dass, director of the Steven Arnold Museum and Archive and director of Steven Arnold: Heavenly Bodies, a documentary about the artist’s life which came out earlier this year. “He visually fused his interests in filmmaking, spiritual traditions, sexuality, and gender to present a new visual mythology crafted for the late 20th century.”

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

The Luxury of Solitude, silver gelatin print, 1984. The Steven Arnold Museum and Archives

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther Man, Art, Exhibitions, Photography

Basquiat’s “Defacement”: The Untold Story

Posted on November 3, 2019

Hailing from Brooklyn, Black 25-year old artist Michael Stewart joined the emerging East Village art scene in 1983 when he leased his first studio in the Anderson Theater for $25 a month. In the early morning hours of September 15 of that year, Stewart and his buddy George Condo tried to get into a party at Keith Haring’s Broome Street loft before hitting up the Pyramid Club on Avenue A. Ready to head home, Stewart entered the L train station on First Avenue and 14th Street.

New York City Transit Police Officer John Kostick later testified under oath that he saw Stewart writing graffiti on the wall at 2:30 a.m. He claimed Stewart surrendered without resistance, but then attempted to run while handcuffed, tripped, and fell face first. Other witnesses testified to seeing Stewart brutally beaten, shouting “someone help me, someone help me!” before being hog-tied and thrown in a police van. Half an hour later, Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital comatose. He never regained consciousness and died on September 28. Two years later, an all-white jury acquitted the six NYPD officers charged in the killing of Michael Stewart.

Stewart’s death did not go unrecognized—then or now. In Basquiat’s “Defacement”: The Untold Story, guest curator Chaédria LaBouvier has organized a deeply moving exhibition that takes Jean-Michel Basquiat’s deeply personal and rarely exhibited painting made the week of Stewart’s death as its starting point, opening a conversation about police brutality that transcends the time in which the work was made.

We brought together a group of legendary graffiti writers and contemporaries of Basquiat and Stewart to reflect on surviving New York in the 1980s.

Read the Full Story at VICE

Categories: 1980s, Art, Manhattan, Vice

Martha: A Picture Story

Posted on October 15, 2019

Selina Miles’ new documentary film – Martha: A Picture Story

When Martha Cooper quit her job as a New York Post staff photographer to photograph graffiti full time, she did what all true believers must do: she sacrificed financial stability, status, and recognition from the establishment. All to pursue a passion rooted in the love and understanding for that which is universal and transcendent. When her first book, Subway Art (Henry Holt, 1984), co-authored with Henry Chalfant tanked upon release, Cooper was disappointed to discover her gamble did not pay off.

“I was shooting up until Subway Art got published, and I imagined it was going to be — maybe not a bestseller, but I did think there would be more of a reaction, but there was virtually no reaction,” Cooper says. “The trains kind of died off right then. They had cracked down right at that moment. Maybe it had to do with the book? I didn’t think so then.”

Unbeknownst to Cooper, the book took on a life of its own as it found its way into the hands of graffiti writers in every corner of the globe. It had become the “Graffiti Bible,” inspiring generations of artists to pick up a can of spray paint and leave their mark on society. Over the years, countless artists have studied the book with reverence, Cooper’s photographs providing not only a template of style but also a wealth of knowledge about the underground culture that birthed it.

Read the Full Story at The Luupe

Martha Cooper’s first book: Subway Art, with Henty Chalfant (Henry Holt, 1984)

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Graffiti, Photography