Posts from the “1980s” Category

Catherine Opie: The Phaidon Monograph

Posted on July 6, 2021

At 60 years old, Catherine Opie speaks with grace and strength that comes from a lifetime of forging her own path through art and connecting with people from all walks of life, whether standing behind the camera and in front of the classroom. As one of the leading photographers of her generation, Opie has chronicled the people, places, and politics of a United States deeply grounded in the intersection between home and identity, creating an intimate portrait of contemporary American life.

In the retrospective monograph, Catherine Opie (Phaidon), the artist brings together over 200 images made over the past 40 years from a wide array of series that reveal the innate humanity we all share. Whether photographing lesbians or high school football players across the US, surfers in California, or ice fishers in Minnesota, Opie is attuned to the subtle frequencies of the individual and the communities they populate.

Throughout her life, photography has served as a bridge, helping Opie to navigate her way through different groups. It is a practice she picked up in her youth, one born out of a very real need to reach across the divide. At the age of 13, Opie moved from Ohio to California, and entered high school as the “new girl”, fairly shy and unsure how to connect with kids who grew up together. “I wasn’t great at figuring out how to make friends,” Opie tells Dazed.

Then inspiration struck. Opie, who had been experimenting in photography since age nine, built a darkroom and began photographing her friends in school plays. “I would go home, print the photographs at night, and then give them prints,” Opie recalls of her formative experience forging bonds with new groups. Things fell into place as Opie found her role: the engaged observer who could move seamlessly between different groups. Wherever the path may take her, Opie can embed herself within the fabric of a community without disrupting it.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

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

In the Gallery with Bene Taschen

Posted on July 5, 2021

*Arlene Gottfried. Striped Woman at Studio 54, NY, 1979.*

“Art was always a part of my life,” says gallerist Bene Taschen, the son of world-renowned German book publisher Benedikt Taschen. “Growing up [in Cologne], I was surrounded by photographers and met great artists working with my father, like Helmut Newton. It was a blessing to have this as a part of my daily life. It was inspiring to be surrounded by art in any form.”

In 2011, an unexpected twist of fate provided Taschen with the opportunity to strike out on his own. He learned that a German exhibition planned for his friend, American photographer Gregory Bojorquez, had been cancelled. “That made me frustrated, so I decided to organise the exhibition myself,” says Taschen. “I didn’t have much gallery experience, but I had a passion for photography and a desire to create a good show that would excite and inspire people who saw it.”

Titled Streets of LA, the exhibition, which was first exhibited in Berlin in September 2011, then Cologne in November 2011, celebrated the people of Bojorquez’s hometown through the lens of an insider: a vantage point that Taschen finds profoundly compelling as a gallerist. “Curating is a very personal experience, and I’m always trying to create something that expresses how I feel and makes me happy,” he says. “The selection of images can tell a story of the artist and their work, but it has to look good together on the wall. I may choose works for different reasons but it has to be visually convincing when it is hung. You can’t just throw 35 photographs in the room and call it an exhibition.”

Read the Full Story at British Journal of Photography

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, British Journal of Photography, Exhibitions, Photography

Janette Beckman: New York, New Music 1980-1986

Posted on June 24, 2021

By 1980, New York City was a shell of its former self, reduced to miles of rubble in Black and Latino communities across the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan. Landlords laid their properties to waste, sometimes hiring arsonists to torch their buildings to collect insurance payouts. With the government support systemically denied under the Nixon White House policy of “benign neglect“, infrastructure crumbled, and crime rose. Yet within this bleak and barren landscape, a new generation came of age embodying the dictum, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”

While white flight drove a mass exodus of the middle class to the hermetic safety of suburbia, rents plummeted, making it possible for anyone to afford to work, live and play in New York. Without the threat of over-policing or the stultification of gentrification, kids ran the streets, the clubs and the bars, creating their own styles of art and music — hip-hop, punk, disco, salsa, jazz, and No Wave — that would set the blueprint for decades to come. It was a golden era, the likes of which are being celebrated in the new exhibition New York, New Music: 1980-1986 at the Museum of the City of New York, which brings together art, fashion, music videos, vinyl records and photography for a kaleidoscopic look at the city’s highly innovative music scene.

“Everything was authentic — it came from the streets and people’s hearts,” says British photographer Janette Beckman, who came to visit New York during Christmas 1982 and never left. “Hip-hop was the boiling point. The economy was bad, and people just decided they were going to do things their way. Kids would steal out of their parents’ house at midnight, go to a train yard to paint, then come home again before going to school. Other kids wrote poetry in their bedrooms, practiced on the streets, and got tapped to rap on stage, getting props from their community. The creativity was coming from the artists, rather than someone telling them what to do.”

Read the Full Story at i-D

*CHARLIE AHEARN, DEBBIE HARRY, FAB 5 FREDDY, GRANDMASTER FLASH, TRACY WORMWORTH, AND CHRIS STEIN, 1981*

Categories: 1980s, Art, Bronx, Brooklyn, Exhibitions, i-D, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Sandra S. Phillips: American Geography – Photographs of Land Use from 1840 to the Present

Posted on June 23, 2021

*George Chasing Wildfires, Eureka, Nevada, 2012 by Lucas Foglia*

Though the phrase “Manifest Destiny” smacks of influencer-speak, it’s more accurately a warning of what will befall opportunists whose ambitions and entitlement are grounded in delusion rather than reality. In Biblical terms, we reap what we sow – a principle all too clear when examining the destruction of the American landscape, the nation’s unchecked greed, and the worsening climate crisis.

For the new book, American Geography: Photographs of Land Use from 1840 to the Present (Radius Books), Sandra S. Phillips, Curator Emerita at the San Francisco Museum of Art, embarked on a 10-year journey to examine the history of land use in the United States. Featuring the work of Dawoud Bey,William Eggleston, Mitch Epstein, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Dorothea Lange, and Stephen Shore, among others, the book explores the role photography has played in shaping our ideas about conservation, expansion, and exploitation of the environment.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Indian Summer, from the series Four Seasons, 2006 by Wendy Red Star*

*“Hiding Place,” Cambridge, MA, from the series The Underground Railroad, 2010 by Amani Willet*

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Huck, Photography

Chester Higgins: The Indelible Spirit

Posted on June 17, 2021

*Chester Higgins. Early morning coffee, Harlem, 1974.*

While working at The Campus Digest, the Tuskegee Institute student newspaper, in the late 1960s, Chester Higgins visited the studio of photographer P.H. Polk and was struck by his powerful portraits of Black Americans made in the 1930s.

“The countenance of the people in Polk’s pictures made me pause,” says Huggins, who hails from the small farming community of New Brockton, Alabama and recognized the archetypes immortalized in these works. “These pictures existed because Polk understood and appreciated the dignity and character of people.”

Knowing he couldn’t afford to commission Polk to do the same for the people of New Brockton, Higgins seized upon an idea and asked if he might borrow Polk’s camera to learn how to make photographs. “He studied me, then finally said, ‘If you’re fool enough to ask me that request, I’m going to be fool enough to help you.’”

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Chester Higgins. Looking for Justice, Civil Rights Rally, Montgomery, Alabama, 1968.*

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

Ming Smith: Evidence

Posted on June 9, 2021

*Ming Smith. Grace Jones, Studio 54 (New York), 1970s.*

Throughout her five-decade career, Ming Smith has broken through boundaries she has faced as a Black American artist coming of age during the Civil Rights Movement. Born in Detroit, raised in Columbus, Ohio, and educated at Howard University in Washington D.C., Smith moved to New York in the 1970s to work as a model alongside pioneers including Grace Jones, Toukie Smith, and Bethann Hardison.

“I didn’t call myself a photographer, but I was constantly shooting,” the artist said in Ming Smith: An Aperture Monograph. “I was just a young person in New York trying to find my way, and I had to support myself, so I took a job as a model.”

While on a go-see, Smith heard Kamoinge members Louis Draper and Anthony Barboza discussing photography. She showed Draper her work and he invited Smith to become the first woman to join the legendary photography collective. “That was a major awakening,” Smith said.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Ming Smith. Self-Portrait as Josephine (New York), 1986.*

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

Black Archives Presents “Stories Untold: The Raymond Boyd Collection”

Posted on June 7, 2021

*Craig Mack Live In Chicago, 1994. Photography Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images*

When Notorious B.I.G. dropped “Juicy” in 1995, he took a generation back to their roots with the iconic bars: “It was all a dream / I used to read Word Up! magazine / Salt ‘N’ Pepa and Heavy D up in the limousine”. Long before hip hop went pop, it was an underground scene shaped by local artists like Chicago photographer Raymond Boyd.

Growing up, Boyd used to page through Black-owned magazines like Ebony and Jet, marveling at pictures of the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, and Diana Ross – whose songs were sampled by hip hop artists he would later photograph. Reading their stories, Boyd was enthralled by tales of struggle and triumph against the odds. “It wasn’t so much gossip,” Boyd recalls. “You read about how they grew up, built their careers, artists who inspired them, how they set up their rehearsals and stage performances. That helped me to learn about them.”

oyd took up photography after his mother gave him a Kodak pocket camera when he graduated high school. Drawn to the local music scene, Boyd frequented local clubs and concerts, making photographs. His enthusiasm caught the eye of Earl Calloway, fine art editor of the Chicago Defender newspaper, who gave Boyd a shot, and helped nurture the young talent into a photojournalist.

“Seeing the live shows just blew me away. Being in the pit in front of the stage that close the artists could look right down at you, point, and pose – that was real cool,” says Boyd. “I also got a chance to sit in front of the artists, listen to them tell their story, get a better understanding of what they went through, and watch how their facial features would change when they talked about how far they’ve come from where they first started. But once the red light goes off on the recorder, the best part of the interview comes.”

Read the Full Story at Dazed

*Bushwick Bill of Geto Boys performs in Chicago, 1990. Photography Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images*

*DJ Mad Mike and rapper Paris at a bookstore in Chicago, 1991 . Photography Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images*

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Dazed, Music, Photography

In the Gallery with: Brian Clamp

Posted on June 4, 2021

*© Peter Berlin, “Self Portrait as Urban Cowboy, “ c. 1970s, Hand-painted vintage gelatin silver print.*

The year 2000 marked a turning point for New York-based gallerist Brian Clamp. After turning 30 and receiving his MA in Critical Studies in Modern Art from Columbia University, he had reached a crossroads. “I had been working as director of Owen Gallery on the Upper East Side, and wanted to get more involved with contemporary art, photography, and working with living artists,” says Clamp. “I decided to take the plunge and start my own gallery, not fully realising what I was getting into.”

That fall, he opened ClampArt, and worked as a private dealer from his West 27th Street loft. An avid practitioner of photography, Clamp also spent time at The Camera Club of New York (now known as Baxter St), getting to know a number of photographers whose work he admired. Through these relationships, Clamp developed the foundations for the gallery program.

In early 2003, Clamp signed a lease for a commercial space on West 25th Street, just as Chelsea was becoming the center of the downtown art world. “I was able to get a ground floor space in Chelsea for my first gallery without any backing,” he says.

Read the Full Story at British Journal of Photography

*© The Estate of Peter Hujar, “Scrumbly Koldewyn and Tom Nieze, The Cockettes,” 1971, Vintage gelatin silver print, Courtesy Peter Hujar Archive.*

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, British Journal of Photography, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

Meryl Meisler: New York PARADISE LOST: Bushwick Era Disco

Posted on June 3, 2021

*Meryl Meisler. Potassa de la Fayette Poised at COYOTE Hookers Ball The Copacabana, NY, NY 1977.*

In 1975, at the tender age of 23, Meryl Meisler arrived in New York City to study with legendary photographer Lisette Model. The Long Island native quickly found herself at home living amid the dazzling display of a city that evoked the refrains of Paradise Lost, John Milton’s 1667 epic poem chronicling the fall of man. Everywhere she turned, scenes of ecstasy, pandemonium and redemption unfolded with cinematic flair, beckoning her to photograph its rapturous days and nights.

In a new book and exhibition, New York PARADISE LOST: Bushwick Era Disco, Meryl chronicles the hedonistic nightlife scene of the late 1970s and pairs it with images of Bushwick in the 1980s as it struggled to recover from the plague of “benign neglect“, wherein the Federal government systemically denied financial support to Black and Brown communities nationwide.

andlords hired arsonists to torch their buildings to collect insurance payouts, prompting Howard Cosell to allegedly proclaim, “There it is ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning” during Game 2 of the 1977 World Series. Entire city blocks were reduced to rubble while abandoned buildings were boarded up. The city was cheap, run-down and dangerous — attracting the kind of fearless devotee that defines the heroic spirit of New York. Teetering along the edge of bankruptcy, $453 million in debt, the city became a cauldron of creativity, unleashing hip hop, punk, and disco before the decade ended.

“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,” Satan proclaims in Paradise Lost, a sentiment befitting the city’s gritty glory. In the wake of the sexual revolution and the civil rights, women’s and gay liberation movements, a new generation came of age revelling in the libertine pleasures. Clubs like Studio 54, Copacabana, GG’s Barnum Room, and Les Mouches offered the ultimate escape: a night of freedom, fantasy, and decadence.

Read the Full Story at i-D

*Meryl Meisler. Magnolia Tree, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY 1983.*

*Meryl Meisler. Meryl’s Hand Prints on JudiJupiter on Man Wearing White, Studio 54, 1977.*

Categories: 1980s, Art, Books, Brooklyn, i-D, Manhattan, Photography

Joel Meyerowitz: Wild Flowers

Posted on May 28, 2021

Bronx-born photographer Joel Meyerowitz is no stranger to risk. At the age of 24, he put it all on the line when he quit his job at a New York-based advertising company to become a photographer after watching Robert Frank at a photoshoot. “I didn’t know who he was, what he stood for, or anything about photography,” Meyerowitz, now 83, recalled of that fateful day in 1962.

“I stood behind him so I could watch the way he was handling the different subjects. I could see it over his shoulder this little action was unfolding. He barely spoke to the preteen girls in front of the camera, he just grunted or made little body gestures. Each time their actions seemed to peak into something that had a fragmentary image of beauty I heard the click of his Leica.”

After the shoot, Meyerowitz went back on the street, and began to see extraordinary moments reveal themselves among the mundane. He remembers, “I walked through New York City, from 23rd Street to 53rd Street, just looking at everything. I had so many minor epiphanies along the way that by the time I got to the office I was filled with of desire to be on the street taking photographs. When I got upstairs, my boss asked me how it went and I said it was, ‘Fantastic, the shoot was great but I’m quitting on Friday. I have to become a photographer.’”

Joel Meyerowitz describes the scene in vivid detail, the way his boss stood silently with a small cigar clenched between his teeth, a little trickle of smoke going up and making his eye wink. “He was appraising me,” Meyerowitz says. “He was an artist himself so he understood that some transformative thing had happened to me. Then he loaned me his camera and out I went on Friday into the world.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Blind, Books, Photography

The Truth About Halston, According to People Who Knew Him

Posted on May 27, 2021

*Liza Minnelli and Halston at Studio 54 circa 1982 in New York CityPhotography by Robin Platzer/Images/Getty Images*

Halston lived the American Dream – then fell victim to it. Born Roy Halston Frowick in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1932, Halston arrived in Chicago at the age of 20, opening a hat business the following year, with a clientele that included actresses such as Kim Novak, Gloria Swanson, and Deborah Kerr. In 1957, he began using the name Halston professionally and moved to New York, skyrocketing to fame when he designed the famous pillbox hat Jacqueline Kennedy wore to the 1961 Presidential inauguration.

By the end of the decade, hats had fallen out of fashion but Halston continued his ascent, designing clothes and opening his first eponymous boutique on Madison Avenue in 1968. The following year Halston launched his first ready-to-wear line, adopting the chic minimalist silhouette that would become the hallmark of disco style. Celebrities including Bianca Jagger, Liza Minnelli, and Babe Paley flocked to Halston in droves, driving the worth of Halston’s line to $30 million. He sold his line in 1973, expanding to become a brand long before this kind of thing was done, stamping his name upon fragrance, luggage, menswear, and handbags, all while retaining creative control.

The 1970s belonged to Halston as he defined decadence with a delicious blend of sex, glamour, and luxury. A fixture on the club scene, Halston brought the edge of night to the daytime world with “The Halstonettes,” a term fashion journalist André Leon Talley used to describe the jet-setting squad of supermodels who appeared together in Halston ads, editorials, and events including Pat Cleveland, Beverly Johnson, Angelica Huston, Karen Bjornson, and Alva Chinn.

But like any mortal flying too close to the sun, Halston’s fall was harrowing. After signing a six-year, billion-dollar licensing deal with JC Penney in 1983 to produce Halston III, a line of affordable products starting at $24, high-end retailers retaliated, dropping his ready-to-wear line. That same year, Halston lost control over his namesake company and then, in 1984, he was banned from creating designs for Halston Enterprises. He barely made it through the decade, testing positive for HIV in 1988, before dying on 26 March 1990 at the age of 57.

“Fashion is brutal,” says photographer Dustin Pittman, who knew Halston from the early 1970s. “People don’t realise the only designer still living from the American side at the Battle of Versailles is Stephen Burrows. That’s it. Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Halston, and Anne Klein are all dead. Fashion goes up and down – a lot of designers go bankrupt.”

In 1991, American journalist Stephen Gaines penned Simply Halston: The Untold Story, the biography that inspired Ryan Murphy’s new five-part Netflix biopic series about the designer’s life starring Ewan McGregor in the title role. In a statement released on 10 May 2021, Halston’s family derided the show as “an inaccurate, fictionalised account”, much in the same way the Versace family described Ryan Murphy’s 2018 American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace as a “work of fiction.”

Invariably, myth looms larger than fact, becoming a through line that shapes the historical record. To provide balance, we speak to Halston’s friends, colleagues and associates to provide insight into the character of a man who was larger than life.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Liza Minnelli; Andy Warhol; Halston; Jack Jr. Haley [& Wife]; Mrs. Mick Jagger – Celebrities during New Year’s Eve party at Studio 54: (l-r) Halston, Bianca Jagger, Jack Haley, Jr. (bkgrd), Liza Minnelli (bkgrd), Andy Warhol.Photography by Robin Platzer/Twin Images/The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images/Getty Images

Categories: 1980s, AnOther, Art, Fashion