Posts from the “1980s” Category

Ron Galella: Shooting Stars – The Untold Stories

Posted on March 28, 2019

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Ron Galella. Photography by Joy Smith © Ron Galella

What makes a legend most? Some say glamour, others scandal – or, in the case of Ron Galella, the ‘Godfather of Paparazzi’ who captured Hollywood’s most illustrious stars over a decades-long career, both.

The Bronx-born, first-generation Italian-American got his start in the early 1950s working as a US Air Force photographer during the Korean War, and took the lessons he learned on the frontlines straight to Hollywood. Armed with two cameras – no bag or coat – Galella would jump fences, crash parties, don disguises, and spend countless hours on stakeouts – all the while enduring threats, humiliation, and even violence for the opportunity to snap celebs.

Infamous for his legal battles with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, he was spat at and punched by Sean Penn; had his tooth knocked out by Richard Burton’s bodyguard; his tires slashed by Elvis Presley’s bodyguards; hosed down by Brigitte Bardot’s security; banned from Studio 54, twice; and caused Elizabeth Taylor to hiss, “I’m going to kill Ron Galella!”. It was all in a day’s work for the fearless paparazzo, who was willing to risk it all to get the shot.

Now 88, Galella has just published a new book Shooting Stars: The Untold Stories, a photographic memoir – including 22 tips for aspiring paparazzos from the man who knows. Here, on a call from his home in New Jersey, Galella recounts some of the most unforgettable moments of his career.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Marlon Brando and Ron Galella, 1974 © Ron Galella

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

Vincent Cianni: A Journey Through the Early Years of AIDS

Posted on March 27, 2019

Scott shaving, Ithaca, NY 1985. Photography Vincent Cianni. Courtesy of the artist

In the early 1980s, a mysterious disease began to infiltrate the LGBTQ community, leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake. As it sped from one person to the next, a horde of horrific illnesses began to manifest as compromised immune systems made once-healthy bodies the site for devastating, often fatal conditions.

The government and the media turned a blind eye, ignoring the plight of HIV/Aids until it reached endemic levels. The speed at which the disease ravaged its victims and spread from one to the next was exacerbated by systemic, malevolent negligence. People were dying at an exponential rate because there was little to no information on the cause, treatment, and prevention of the disease.

It wasn’t until 1983 (after 1,450 cases, 558 of which ended in death) that The New York Times finally put Aids on the front page when the US government’s top health official declared an investigation of the disease was now “the number 1 priority” of the Public Health Service. Suddenly centered, it seemed Aids was everywhere – and the stigma, brought about by misinformation and malevolence, became something fierce.

“Early on it was a state of confusion, fear, and uncertainty,” remembers Italian-American photographer Vincent Cianni, whose photographs from the era are currently on view at Vincent Cianni: A Survey until April 6.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Cassell, 1989. Photography Vincent Cianni. Courtesy of the artist

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Photography

Rosalind Fox Solomon Wins 2019 ICP Lifetime Achievement Award

Posted on March 27, 2019

Rosalind Solomon (b. 1930) An East Village Painter, NYC, 1986 © Rosalind Fox Solomon, Courtesy of Bruce Silverstein, New York

American photographer Rosalind Fox Solomon is a master of precision and poise, capturing the most compelling moments in life. On April 2 – her 89th birthday –Solomon will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Centre of Photography.

Solomon came to photography later than most, picking up an Instamatic camera at the age of 38 to create a visual diary of her experiences in Japan. She was in the country doing volunteer work with the Experiment in International Living, a summer abroad program for high school students.

“I felt an intimacy with the camera and great excitement at being able to see and photograph an intriguing culture which I had not known before,” Solomon recalls. “With that point and shoot camera, I began to awaken a more contemplative part of myself. I found myself in a meditative state, looking, thinking and feeling. I had a sense of being self-sustaining, silent, and intensely connected to a new world.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Rosalind Solomon (b. 1930). Self-portrait with curtain, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 1987 © Rosalind Fox Solomon, Courtesy of Bruce Silverstein, New York

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Japan, Photography

Remembering the Life and Legacy of Patrick D. Pagnano, Street Photographer

Posted on March 20, 2019

On October 7, 2018, the photographer Patrick D. Pagnano died, leaving behind a treasury of classic American street photography and documentary work made over more than 50 years.

While attending Columbia College Chicago, Pagnano developed his “stream of consciousness” approach to street photography, a narrative technique inspired by Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, and Walker Evans. Pagnano strove to capture the essence of the moment while simultaneously indicating a larger story beyond the photograph, creating a dynamic exchange between the subject and the environment in each photograph.

In 2002, Pagnano published Shot on the Street, a collection of his color work made during the 1970s and ‘80s that evokes the visual poetry of Helen Leviitt and the intimacy of Joel Meyerowitz.

In the preface, Pagnano writes, “’Shot on the Street’ refers not only to the images having been taken on the street, but more importantly, to the psychological effect of the street. It is a place where races of people and social classes converge and vie for space and mobility with ever increasing urbanism. It can excite, anger, defeat, and inspire. The street’s influence and energy never ceases.”

That electric energy comes alive in Pagnano’s work, whether capturing candid scenes of daily life on the pavement or taking in the pleasures of Empire Roller Disco, his series documenting the legendary Brooklyn skating rink. Here, Kari Pagnano, his wife of 44 years, gives us a deep, heartfelt look at Pagnano’s life and legacy.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Manhattan, Photography

Araki: Impossible Love – Vintage Photographs

Posted on March 20, 2019

Photo: Ohne Titel, a.d.S. The Days We Were Happy, 1975 © Nobuyoshi Araki. Courtesy of Privatsammlung Eva Felten

For over half a century, Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki has devoted himself to plumbing the depths of that which is most intimate – the invisible, intangible spirit that animates our very flesh. In his hands, the erotic transcends the mere functionality of pornography and reveals the raw intensity of the emotional, physical, and psychological self that gives sex its power.

At 78, the prolific artist has published over 500 books, including his latest offering Araki: Impossible Love – Vintage Photographs, out today. Arranged chronologically, the book maps Araki’s oeuvre as it unfolds, transforming his photo diary into a visual autobiography of a singular, subversive life in art.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Kinbaku, 2010, Polaroid
© Nobuyoshi Araki. Courtesy of artspace AM, Tokyo

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther, Art, Books, Japan, Photography

Laurie Simmons: Big Camera, Little Camera

Posted on March 17, 2019

Long House (Orange and Green Lounge), 2004. © Laurie Simmons

Have you ever wanted to step into a picture and live in that world? It’s a feeling American artist Laurie Simmons knows very well. “When I was a child, I had a strong desire to enter into the drawings in the storybook,” she says. “I can remember sitting on my mother’s lap and feeling this frustration. I wanted to get inside and walk around with the characters.”

As a member of The Pictures Generation (a group of American artists from the 70s who critically analysed the media), Simmons explores the subject of womanhood through enigmatic images that subvert stereotypes, forcing viewers to question their own assumptions.

40 years in the making, Laurie Simmons: Big Camera, Little Camera, is a major retrospective exhibition and book exploring the construction of gender, identity, reality, and illusion – as well as the photograph itself. Her work stages scenes that become poems, metaphors, and meditations on much larger ideas.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

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

Bruno Stettler: Als War’s Das Letze Mal

Posted on March 14, 2019

Siouxsie & the Banshees. Baden. 9. 7. 1979 © Bruno Stettler

Musical Youth. Zürich. 1983 © Bruno Stettler

On October 1, 1977, the Clash played Switzerland for the very first time. Their 15-track set at Kaufleuten in Zürich began with “London’s Burning” and “Complete Control” — and somewhere in the audience, 16-year-old Bruno Stettler was taking his very first concert photographs.

Over the next decade, Stettler would go on to take 20,000 photographs at nearly 100 rock concerts around town, capturing the raw intimacy of live shows long before they became overproduced spectacles.

In his new book, Als War’s Das Letze Mal (Sturm & Drang), Stettler takes us on a magical trip through the looking glass, back in the late 1970s and ’80s, when legends like Bob Marley, David Bowie. Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, Patti Smith, Nina Hagen, and Kraftwerk called the shots.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Judas Priest. Zürich 17. 4. 1980 © Bruno Stettler

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Music

Olivier Fatton: Coco

Posted on March 4, 2019

Coco, Copyright Olivier Fatton.

Éve-Claudine Lorétan – alias Coco – met photographer Olivier Fatton on a Sunday in November 1989, at a sauna in Bern, Switzerland. Their meeting would mark the final act of Coco’s short life, in which she was at once fashion model, performance artist, and tabloid sensation.

“We fell in love at first sight,” Fatton says, speaking through a translator from Paris. “I had the impression I just met an angel. At the time, I was really drawn to aesthetics. Coco looked so beautiful that I just wanted to take pictures of her.”

Before meeting Coco, Fatton, 32, had been photographing male nudes in staged scenes, awash with beauty but empty of love. Their connection was absolute and instantaneous. They went for coffee, then to bed, in short order.

“I want to be your model. In return, you’ll document my transformation. I’m going to have a sex change,” Coco told Fatton, as he recounts in a new book, Coco.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Online

Coco, Copyright Olivier Fatton.

Coco, Copyright Olivier Fatton.

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, AnOther, Art, Books, Photography

Rosalind Fox Solomon: Liberty Theater

Posted on February 27, 2019

Rosalind Fox Solomon, ‘Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1976’ in Liberty Theater (2018). © Rosalind Fox Solomon. Courtesy of the artist and MACK.

Rosalind Fox Solomon, ‘New Orleans, Louisiana, 1992’ in Liberty Theater (2018). © Rosalind Fox Solomon. Courtesy of the artist and MACK.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, American artist Rosalind Fox Solomon traveled across the South creating a powerful series of photographs that reveal the state of the nation during the first decade following the Civil Rights Movement. It is here in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina that we are privy to the complex interconnection of life rooted in the triumphs, tragedies, and traumas of the past.

At the time Fox Solomon started making these images, she had begun taking trips to New York to study photography with Lisette Model, a master of the human psyche laid bare in silver gelatin. Fox Solomon’s work bears witness to the power of photography to cut to the quick, to go beyond the luxuries and limitations of language by focusing solely on action, gesture, and expression to tell us more than word could ever say in a single, fleeting moment.

Fox Solomon’s photographs resonate with quiet grandeur, visceral eccentricity, and profound depth of ineffable emotion. Over the next two decades, she traversed the deepest reaches of the South to create Liberty Theater (MACK), an exquisitely nuanced portrait of the profound interplay of race, class, and segregation.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Rosalind Fox Solomon, ‘New Orleans, Louisiana, 1993’ in Liberty Theater (2018). © Rosalind Fox Solomon. Courtesy of the artist and MACK.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Larry Racioppo: Brooklyn Before: Photographs, 1971-1983

Posted on February 7, 2019

Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, a movement was afoot. The media called it “white flight” and sang it from the rooftops. The cities were being abandoned as white families ran for the hills of suburban towns just as Black and Latinx populations were finding a foothold in northern climates following the Great Migration, Operation Bootstrap, and Operation Peter Pan.

By the 1970s, a new era had begun — one of fueled by urban decay that left only the most strident New Yorkers in place. It was a city of true grit, where only the strongest survive, a city filled with idiosyncratic characters that were simultaneously celebrated and vilified. It was, simply put, a “New” York in every sense of the word.

Brooklyn native Larry Racioppo headed west for two years before returning to his hometown in December 1970. He took a job at the phone company and a class at SVA, which inspired him to start photographing the world in which he lived. Then little by little, everything began to change.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

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

New York in Photo Books

Posted on February 6, 2019

Life is Good & Good For You in New York by William Klein (1956)

There are eight million stories in the naked city — at any given time. As the years slip away, one fact remains: the only constant is change. “New” is the truth. Nothing ever stays the same, except the photographs. This, my friend, is the only time you can and will ever go home again.

At a certain point, even if you weren’t there, you know the photograph. It’s become a memory of another time and place that has now become a part of a history that ceaselessly fascinates. The city has a curious ability to romanticize the dog-eat-dog Darwinian principles that made Frank Sinatra proudly proclaim, “If I can make it there I can make it anywhere.”

It’s vast, self-aggrandizing sensibilities spring up from the bedrock upon which the city is laid, it’s towering testaments to capitalism lining the island of Manhattan like so many rows of jagged teeth, while the outer lying boroughs nestle around like kin, creating a sprawling mass of magnificent encounters that can only happen in a place like this.

New York is not just photogenic, it’s the very landscape where genres flourish and styles abound — advancing the medium as only a true muse can. In New York in Photo Books (RM/Cento José Guerrero), editor Horacio Fernández takes us on a spellbinding tour of the city that never sleeps in ink on paper.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

New York by Keizo Kitajama (1982)

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography