Posts from the “1980s” Category

Picturing Resistance: Moments and Movements of Social Change from the 1960s to Today

Posted on October 22, 2020

*©Bob Adelman Estate. Mourner with sign at the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., memorial service, Memphis, Tennessee, 1968.*

Protest is the very foundation upon which the United States was built. In demanding the government answers to the people and not the other way around, it is vital to a functioning democracy and at the core of the First Amendment.

In 2020, protests feel particularly ubiquitous; spurred on by the Black Lives Matter Movement, which has since become one of the biggest global civil rights actions in the history of the world. The protest movement as we know it today began with the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till — his killers declared not guilty the very same day Breonna Taylor’s would some 65 years later.

“Nobody’s free until everybody’s free,” activist Fannie Lou Hamer famously said in a 1971 speech. It is a principle at the heart of Picturing Resistance: Moments and Movements of Social Change from the 1960s to Today (Ten Speed Press), a new book by Melanie Light and Ken Light.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*©1976 Matt Herron. A white policeman rips an American flag away from a young Black child, having already confiscated his “No More Police Brutality” sign, Jackson, Mississippi, 1965.*

*©Michael Abramson. The Young Lords, New York City, 1970.*

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

Andé Whyland: Shots – 1980–1986

Posted on October 15, 2020

*Andé Whyland. Keith Haring, Bethann Hardison, Grace Jones, Fab 5 Freddy*

Growing up in Long Island and San Francisco, photographer AndéWhyland dreamed of moving to Manhattan from a young age. “Always feeling like a misfit, a city as large as New York had to have a place for me and a way to survive,” she says.

In 1979, Whyland finally arrived, settling into a first-floor apartment in the East Village where she paid a mere $130 a month. Two friends in the building were regulars at Club 57 – a nightclub on St. Marks Place that hosted experimental art and performance events. They asked Whyland to model in a fashion show that featured “all kinds of weird props and some meat thrown around”. Soon enough, Whyland was hooked.

“New York gave me the freedom to be myself for the first time in my life,” she says. “Making money was not a priority, but staying out late and having fun was. Everyone I got to know in the clubs was celebrating our newfound family, and the opportunity to do anything.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Andé Whyland. John Kelly in Ballet of the Dolls*

*Andé Whyland. RuPaul, Billy Beyond, Larry Tee, Hapi Phace, Hatti Hathaway (center front).*

Categories: 1980s

Martha Cooper: Taking Pictures

Posted on October 14, 2020

*Dondi’s Room Brooklyn, NYC 1979 © Martha Cooper*

Under the cover of night, Martha Cooper crept into train yards to document some of New York’s most legendary graffiti writers as they brandished spray cans, unfurling masterpieces on the outside of subway trains in 1981 and ‘82. The petite photographer slipped through a hole cute into the chain link fence, agilely maneuvering her way between the massive steel cars, quick to duck under one if a train worker came by, taking tremendous care not to touch the third rail, through which 600 volts of live electricity steadily coursed.

Cooper carefully took aim as writers like DONDI, DEZ, DAZE SKEME, MIN, SHY, and LADY PINK worked feverishly through the night, painting their names on the exterior of a single subway car, a “canvas” that was 50 feet long by 12 feet high. “It was so dark they couldn’t even see what color the paints were,” Cooper says. “They were lighting matches — where the whole can could explode — to see the color of the paint.”

To call graffiti “death defying” would not be an overstatement, for many writers have died or been badly injured in their quest to “get up.” Often teenagers, writers were willing to risk it all for what they loved. Though Cooper was nearing 40, she was no less daring. She just quit her job as the first woman staff photographer at the New York Post in 1980 so that she could have more time to document graffiti.

“I was ambitious and the Post wasn’t enough. I wanted to be a National Geographic photographer,” says Cooper, who was also the first woman photographer to intern for the fabled photo magazine in 1968. Cooper envisioned her portrait of New York’s artistic underground would catapult her to the top of the documentary photography scene but things didn’t work out quite like she planned.

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Skeme, Bronx, NYC, 1982 © Martha Cooper*

Categories: 1980s, Art, Blind, Graffiti, Photography

Sunil Gupta: Lovers – Ten Years On

Posted on September 30, 2020

In summer 1978, New Delhi-born, Montreal-raised photographer Sunil Gupta arrived in London. “I was following a guy,” Gupta tells AnOther from his home in south London. The two had first met in Canada while enrolled in business school. After graduating, Gupta’s boyfriend took a job that required him train in New York City before sending him to London to work.

Just entering his twenties, Gupta went along for the ride, thinking he would get a job when he arrived. Things didn’t quite work out as he had planned. “We started out at a similar footing as students but working at the bank he got settled quickly and became relatively well off,” Gupta says. “I had gone the other way. I made no money at all and had become completely dependent. It didn’t seem to matter. We were together and in the gay world, ten years seemed like a long time especially back then.”

After Gupta received him MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art in 1983, the Home Office sent him back to Montreal until he as able to get a visa to live and work in the UK. Once things had finally stabilized, the relationship came to an end – much to Gupta’s surprise. “My life changed quite dramatically: not only was I single but I had to fend for myself. I left with a suitcase. I had no rights at all. Although the UK legalized the sex act in the late 60s, they didn’t legalize [gay] marriage until the 2010s. It took them 50 years to get around to that part of things,” he says.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

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

Grace Before Jones: Camera, Disco, Studio

Posted on September 30, 2020

*Richard Bernstein, Grace Jones photographs for On Your Knees, 1979. Eric Boman courtesy of The Estate of Richard Bernstein*

Hailing from Jamaica, Grace Jones is a true iconoclast: a rebellious pioneer who set the worlds of music, fashion, and film ablaze with aesthetics that defied categorisation, appropriation, or co-option by industries that have long cannibalised marginalised communities.

In the new exhibition at Nottingham Contemporary, Grace Before Jones: Camera, Disco, Studio, curators Cédric Fauq and Olivia Aherne offer a multifaceted portrait of the renegade who turned the mainstream upside down with her refusal to be pigeonholed by any singular quality.

Featuring 100 works by some 50 artists including Anthony Barboza, Antonio Lopez, Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Jean-Paul Goode,Grace Before Jones is organized into 13 sections that explore her approaches to gender, sexuality, performance, race, and cybernetics throughout her career.

“The incredibly poignant thing about this exhibition is that everything she was doing in the 1970s, ‘80, and early ‘90s is still relevant today,” says Aherne. “It stills feel so fresh and experimental, even though Grace was thinking about things like Afrofuturism back in the ‘80s, at a time when these ideas were first being developed and hashed out.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Antonio Lopez, Personal Study, Angelo Colon, 1983 © The Estate of Antonio Lopez and Juan Ramos*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Exhibitions, Fashion, Huck, Photography

Remembering Keith Haring

Posted on September 24, 2020

*Unknown photographer, 1989 Courtesy of The LGBT Community Center National History Archive*

Just 31 years old at the time of his death, Keith Haring (1958–1990) was a small-town boy who took the big city by storm when he moved to New York in 1978 to study at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). He began frequenting Club 57, an experimental art space and nightclub in the East Village, and quickly became close friends with a new generation of groundbreaking young artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Kenny Scharf, and Futura 2000.

In the early 80s, Haring made his name with some 40 “subway drawings”, introducing his soon-to-be iconic symbolic language to the world in a series of white chalk drawings on black matte paper that occupied unused advertising panels in New York City train stations. The public immediately fell in love with this early iteration of street art, which was often thematic in nature, offering holiday cheer as a treat. In 1982, Haring made his Soho gallery debut at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, and soon became the toast of the international art world – but at his heart Haring was a man of the people.

In 1986, Haring opened the Pop Shop, the ultimate retail space that offered affordable art in the form of T-shirts, toys, posters, and buttons. He was also devoted to art in the service of activism, collaborating with organisations and charities around the globe to raise money and awareness on issues as diverse as Aids, apartheid, and the crack epidemic. In 1988, Haring was diagnosed with Aids and less than two years later he was gone – yet the love of his work lives on, generation after generation.

On September 24, Sotheby’s will open Dear Keith: Works From the Personal Collection of Keith Haring, a dedicated online auction presenting over 140 works of art and objects gifted to, purchased by, and traded with Haring among his circle, by artists including Andy Warhol, George Condo, Rammellzee, Roy Lichtenstein, Scharf, and Basquiat. Full proceeds from the auction will benefit The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center of New York, an organization Haring proudly partnered with during his life. In advance of the auction, we speak with fellow artists and friends who share their encounters with Haring over the years.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled. Courtesy of Sotheby’s

Categories: 1980s, AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Manhattan

Ella Snyder x Collier Schorr

Posted on September 22, 2020

*“Jennifer (Head)”, 2002-2014 Photography by Collier Schorr, courtesy of 303 Gallery, New York*

For anyone with a marginalised identity, being absent in and erased from mainstream imagery can be painful. Each fighting for that visibility in their own ways are photographers Collier Schorr and Ella Snyder, whose work goes beyond the confines of cisheteronormativity to provide perspectives on gender and identity that have rarely been centred in the worlds of fashion and art.

Schorr, who got into photography when she recognised the need for a lesbian voice in the art world of 1980s New York, has blazed a decades-spanning trail, inspiring generations of young artists to be the change they wish to see in the world. Her images have created an established space for queer voices to speak truth to power through art.

Snyder, meanwhile, is a New York-based model, photographer, YouTuber – and long term superfan of Schorr’s. She is currently working on her first photography book, supported by a grant from the 2020 Dazed 100 Ideas Fund in partnership with Converse. The book focuses on the transgender community and her place within it – a process of restoring a vital connection lost after she began transitioning at the age of 11 and subsequently lived stealth. A decade later, Snyder openly embraces her full identity and uses her talents to create powerful connections within the trans community and the world writ large.

As part of her Dazed 100 takeover, Snyder speaks to Schorr for the first time – in a conversation that captures the innovative, nonconformist spirit that bridges Generations X and Z, the two discuss the ways in which photography can be used as a tool of liberation to reimagine a world where the full spectrum of selfhood can be celebrated.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

*Collier Schorr. Self portrait from ‘8 Women’*

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Dazed, Fashion, Photography, Women

Adger Cowans on the Spiritual Power of Photography

Posted on September 21, 2020

*Adger Cowans. Biggie Smalls, Brooklyn, New York, c. 1990s*

Photographer Adger Cowans, who turned 84-years-old earlier this month (September 19), was one of the few African American artists to work commercially during the mid-twentieth century. Before garnering widespread recognition for his experimental style of image-making, Cowans got his start assisting Gordon Parks – a groundbreaking figure in 20th-century photography – at Life magazine in the 1950s.

Cowans first reached out to Parks while he was pursuing a BFA in photography at Ohio State University. “I wrote Gordon a letter, and he wrote me back and told me to look him up when I got to New York,” explains Cowans. “That summer, I went to New York if Miles Davis was at the Vanguard or Thelonious Monk was at the Five Spot. One of those weekends, I called Gordon.”

“Gordon said (to me), ‘Get on the train and come and see me in White Plains.’ I got there and waited and I saw this powder blue Corvette; the top was down, all-white leather seats. I saw a guy smoking a pipe and he said, ‘Adger Cowans? Gordon Parks.’ I said, “I’m going to be a photographer! Oh boy, this is the deal!’”

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Adger Cowans. Gloria Lynne, Newport Jazz, 1961.*

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

A Golden Age of NYC Nightlife: Nightclub Ephemera from the 1980s

Posted on September 17, 2020

*Xenon, Everybody Hates Punk Tad Shaffer, Poster, 1978*

*Club 57 at Irving Plaza, Lee Scratch Perry, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Card, 1981*

In the mid-1960s, Max’s Kansas City became the mecca of New York’s avant-garde, attracting a mix of artists, writers, musicians, and underground stars who made the famed backroom into the ultimate nightlife destination.

By the 1970s, Max’s began hosting performances for glam rock and punk icons, setting the tone for a new breed of nightclub culture that brought together the worlds of art, music, fashion, literature, and film into a carnivalesque environment.

Before the advent of the internet, promoters spread the word by creating innovative flyers to advertise their one-night-only affairs. These eye-catching pieces of ephemera became an integral part of the event, with denizens eager to get on the mailing lists and have an instant “in” to that night’s coolest scene.

Artists like Antonio Lopez, Keith Haring, David LaChapelle, and Jenny Holzer would collaborate on these flyer designs. Produced and distributed en masse, they have become a record of New York’s downtown scene. Once given away free of charge, they are now valued as works of art.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*AREA, Grace Jones & Christian Jones, Folded Card, 1986*

*AREA, Antonio Lopez, A Celebration for Kevin, Folded Card, 1984*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Fashion, Huck, Manhattan, Music

Excess is a Work of Art

Posted on September 14, 2020

New York is a phoenix: in death it is reborn. During the 1970s, after years of white flight, landlord-sponsored arson, and systemic government disinvestment cozily termed “benign neglect,” the city teetered along the edge of bankruptcy and nearly collapsed. Though naysayers cried, “New York is dead,” they were wrong. The city arose from the ashes in the 1980s, stronger than ever before.

In Ronald Reagan’s America, greed was good and gauche was chic as the lifestyles of the nouveau riche and famous set the art world ablaze. Art became the ultimate commodity, the status symbol that telegraphed not only a sense of worldly sophistication but business savvy among the emerging neoliberal elite. Investors flocked to the world’s only unregulated industry, transforming the art market into a luxury exchange.

All things considered it was the logical extension of Andy Warhol’s veneration of “the object” that fueled the creation of his distinctive brand of Pop Art. In creating an instantly recognizable iconography centering the mundane matters of everyday life, Warhol not only elevated the commonplace into the sacred realm of art but also transformed the artist into a brand. Like any heritage brand, Warhol understood the way to keep current was to mix it up with the youth — a mission that put him on the path to socialize and collaborate with Jean-Michel Basquiat, an artist fueled by an ambition and a savvy all his own—to infiltrate New York’s highly exclusionary art world.

Read the Full Story at Jacques Marie Mage

Categories: 1980s, Art, Critical Essays, Jacques Marie Mage

Christopher Makos: Dirty

Posted on September 11, 2020

*Christopher Makos. Hawaiian Shirt, 1976.*

At the outset of his artistic career in 1976, May Ray imparted upon American photographerChristopher Makos a simple ethos to make great work: “obey your instinct” – a directive that has served him well over the years.

Infused with a delectable mix of confidence, charisma, and striking beauty, Makos returned to New York ready to take the city by storm. The following year he published his first monograph, White Trash, a bold and beguiling collection of photos documenting the punk scene that effortlessly mixed high and low society with all the verve of a bright young thing.

Andy Warhol took notice and soon the two became friends and collaborators. When editor Bob Colacello departed Interview magazine in 1983, leaving his ‘Out’ column behind, Warhol suggested Makos start a column called ‘In’. Soon New York’s finest found their way to Makos’ studio, ready to bare it all.

“I remember at the time, if I had a model in front of me and if I didn’t ask him or her to undress they were so disappointed like, ‘Did I not make the grade?’” Makos tells AnOther. “When I look at some of these pictures now, I think about TikTok and Instagram, I was way ahead of the curve there because so many of these pictures of these sexy boys and girls; they’re of the moment now.”

Read the Full Story at AnOther

*Christopher Makos. Keven Kendall Red Bikini Polaroid, 1986.*

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