Posts from the “Brooklyn” Category

Rest in Peace Charlie Murphy (1959-2017)

Posted on April 12, 2017

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ – NOVEMBER 14: Charlie Murphy performs at The Stress Factory Comedy Club on November 14, 2014 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. (Photo by Bobby Bank/WireImage)

Charlie Murphy died today from leukemia. He was just 57 years old. As Eddie Murphy’s older brother, Charlie Murphy was privy to the shenanigans of the demi-monde during the 1980s, and he ain’t forget a thing. The actor and comedian, who made his silver screen debut in Harlem Nights (1989), became a household name when he began making appearances on Chapelle’s Show, starring in the legendary skits, “Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories.”

It simply must be said: “Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories” changed lives. His sketches about the behind-the-scenes antics of Rick James and Prince inspired countless quotables that have become classics today. Murphy’s deadpan delivery set against a green backdrop, his voice unwavering as he recounts misadventures run amok, created a brilliant foil to Dave Chapelle’s glorious characterizations.

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Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Brooklyn, Crave

Flint Gennari: The Faces Behind New York Graffiti in the 70s

Posted on March 3, 2017

Photo: Courtesy of Flint Gennari

Picture it: Brooklyn, 1965. Dyslexic and hard-of-hearing, young Roberto Gennari didn’t fit in anywhere and performed poorly at school. A sensitive child, he began to withdraw into his own world, finding pleasure in photography. But it was a fourth-grade social studies class that changed his fate. During a lesson about World War II, the teacher began talking about “Kilroy Was Here,” the doodle made famous by American soldiers that started popping up around the world for years.

Gennari was hooked. He likened the idea of writing his name on the walls to advertising. He cites Madison Avenue logos and slogans as his primary reference, as well as the work of artist Peter Max, who made his name the centrepieces of his public artworks for the New York City transit system.

Inspired by the world around him, Gennari began writing cheeky phrases like For Those Who Dare, For Ladies Only, Bad but Not Evil, and The Time Will Come then signing them as “FLINT.” A decade later, his exploits would inspire his high-school classmate Al Diaz, who went on to create SAMO© with Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1977, after FLINT was out of the game.

In 1970, Gennari borrowed his father’s camera and began photographing New York’s graffiti scene, capturing a culture (destined to take over the world) in its infancy. Gennari, whose photographs span 1970–77, speaks with Dazed about growing up in the first generation of New York City’s graffiti scene.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Brooklyn, Dazed, Graffiti, Photography

Whose Streets? Our Streets!

Posted on January 20, 2017

Photo: Squatters attempt to defend their building by blocking the street with overturned cars and trash before an expected attack by the police on East 13th Street. 1995 © Andrew Lichtenstein

As we enter a brave new world filled with threats unfolding against the citizens of this nation by the very hand of the government it purports to serve, we can look to the recent past to find inspiration in the power of the people and their will to speak truth to power by any means necessary.

From race relations, policy brutality, and war to gay rights, abortion, and housing, ever issue facing the common man and woman was addressed by organizers who understood the power of mass protests. Civil disobedience, a term coined by no less that Henry David Thoreau in an essay of the same name penned in 1849, takes the high road of political activism. Grounded in the moral welfare of the people, it is a practice that is American at its core, for this country was founded upon the refusal to accept state-sanctioned abuse that openly violated human rights.

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Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Bronx, Brooklyn, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

Jamel Shabazz: Pieces of a Man

Posted on November 8, 2016

Photo: Untitled, East Flatbush, 1990. © Jamel Shabazz

Pieces of a Man (Art Voices Art Books), the newest monograph by legendary photographer Jamel Shabazz, is a tremendous undertaking, bringing us around the world and across time, yet always able to center on what we all share as human beings. The title speaks to the way in which each of us are so many things in this life and on this earth, with each photograph capturing a facet of our infinite complexity. The book, like the individual, proves that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole, and yet sometimes we feel fragmented, or must only reveal one part of ourselves, and still remain authentic to our souls.

Pieces of a Man is a story of love and loss, of joy and pain, of life and death and rebirth with each page. It’s like listening to a classic album like What’s Going On—absolutely overwhelming and yet, you want to listen to it over and over. Shabazz talks with Crave, providing us with a treasure trove of insight and inspiration.

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Photo: Waiting, Brownsville, Brooklyn, 2012. © Jamel Shabazz

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Brooklyn, Crave, Photography

Ruddy Roye: When Living is a Protest

Posted on October 19, 2016

Photo: Ruddy Roye. Blood, Sweat and Tears (Ryan), Morton Street, Newark, NJ, December 19, 2015 Archival pigment print on metallic paper, printed 2016, 35 x 35 in Edition of 10; Signed by photographer verso

From the top of the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke, delivering a sermon to the world, one that resonates in our mind’s ear whenever we hear the words, “I have a dream.” The timbre of his voice is permanently imprinted on our soul, his words among the most patriotic ever spoken. On the eighth anniversary of the brutal murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, Dr. King’s testimony was centuries in the making, calling forth the ancestors of this country’s earliest days.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter,” Dr. King warned. There is an exquisite horror to the dying soul that lurks within the living body, feasting upon flesh and bone. It has been said that silence equals death; to speak against injustice and oppression is the essence of what it means to be American. These are the words that photographer Radcliffe “Ruddy” Roye carries within himself, revealing on his Instagram: “It is a creed I live by at whatever cost.”

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Categories: Art, Brooklyn, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

OFF WHITE: Curated by Akintola Hanif

Posted on October 12, 2016

Artwork: Adrian A. Franks, 10 Shots For Help, 2013, Digital giclee on watercolor paper, 60 x 39 inches.

The concept of “race” is a political, social, and economic construct designed maintain a system of double standards that sees one group benefit through the oppression and exploitation of everyone else. Its roots were planted in the Virginia colony during the late 1600s, when political leaders found themselves loathe to give up their bond servants, and the children born unto them, after their period of servitude had been completed. At the same time, it became clear peasants were as difficult to govern in the New World as they had been in the Old. Peasants were prone to band together and rise up against the ruling class, with no thought towards the fact that their ancestries differed from one another.

Desperate to find a solution to these quandaries, the leaders of Virginia invented a new group of people, legislating “whites” into existence in 1691. Under these new laws, they established the concept of race, where “whites” were given certain rights that “blacks” were denied. Divide-and-conquer is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and the played the card for it all it was worth. At the close of the seventeenth century, race was beholden to legal and economic control, weaving injustice into the fabric of the nation before it even existed as such.

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Categories: Art, Brooklyn, Crave, Exhibitions

Meryl Meisler & James Panero: Bushwik Chronicle

Posted on October 4, 2016

Artwork: A Garden Grows in Bushwick 1988, 16″ x20″ Acrylic Paint on Cibachrome Print © Meryl Meisler 2016.

On the northern edge of Brooklyn lies Bushwick, the largest Latino community in the borough. Comprised primarily of Americans of Puerto Rican and Dominican descent, the neighborhood has produced leaders like Nydia Velázquez, the first Latina elected to the United States Congress and actress and activist Rosie Perez.

By the early 1970s, it became devastated under the federal policy of “benign neglect,” as well as the Nixon White House’s drug war, which flooded the neighborhood with heroin. By the late 1970s, arson had taken its toll, leaving Bushwick looking like a third world country. Yet, despite it all, the community persevered.

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Categories: 1980s, Art, Brooklyn, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Wall Writers: Graffiti in its Innocence

Posted on September 16, 2016

Photo: CORNBREAD declares he has retired, 1971. Photo used with permission of Philadelphia Inquirer, ©2014

Picture it: New York and Philadelphia, the late 1960s. A curious phenomenon takes hold as names begin to appear on the street, written on the walls. In the beginning, it’s just a couple of names, written over and over again. It’s a mystery, these names. Who are they and what do they mean? It doesn’t quite register with the general population but it hits home with kids. It’s fame of a most unusual kind. The fame of being known for what you do long before anyone knows who you are.

It slowly begins to grip the imagination of a few who are dedicated, and from these humble beginnings, a cultural revolution begins. Graffiti is one of the most basic human impulses. As soon as children know how to write their names, they’re keen to leave their mark. This offends many who find it indecorous, such is their longing to conform to other people’s rules. But then there are those who refuse to conform and insist on living on their own terms.

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UGA canvas featuring STITCH 1-n-ROCKY 184, circa 1973. Photo courtesy of Rocky 184.

ROCKY 184 and STITCH 1, circa 1972. Courtesy of ROCKY 184.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Brooklyn, Crave, Graffiti, Manhattan

Martha Cooper & Henry Chalfant: Subway Art

Posted on August 29, 2016

Photo: “Midg” with yellow school bus, 1982. © Martha Cooper

During the early 1970s, graffiti made it way to the trains of New York, spreading across the city like a virus and capturing the imagination of a new generation of artists in every borough. Sneaking into the yards and walking through the tunnels in the dead of night, graffiti writers were on a mission like no one had seen before—or has seen since. Fame. Recognition. Renown. In the city that never sleeps, Kings were crowned.

But as quick as it came, it disappeared. Were it not for the photographs, there would be nothing left. Fortunately writers and artists share that same compulsion to document and to collect. As fate would have it, Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant had both been documenting the same scene at the same time from distinctive vantage points.

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Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Bronx, Brooklyn, Crave, Graffiti, Manhattan, Painting, Photography

Cate Dingley: EZY Riders

Posted on July 9, 2016

Photo: Imperials MC Bike Blessing. Brooklyn, 2015. ©Cate Dingley.

You ever been walking down the street in New York when a crew of bikers pulls up. You hear them coming because they roll deep AF, and when you look it’s like you’ve gone to glory and everywhere is love. Out in the boroughs is where you will find them, the Steel Horses Motorcycle Club (740 E 98th St, Brooklyn), and Black Falcons Motorcycle Club (523 Bruckner Boulevard, Bronx).

This Sunday, July 10, 2016, the Steel Horses MC will be hosting their annual bike blessing, drawing thousands of local riders for a classic Brooklyn Block Party. This year, American photographer Cate Dingley (b. 1989) presents Ezy Riders, an outdoor installation featuring large-format black and white prints taken over the past two years, capturing the riders, their lives, and the culture in full swing. The prints will be wheatpasted to exterior walls at both locations, and like all good street art, it will be up until the weather wears it away. Cate Dingley speaks with Crave about her work.

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Photo: Choice, President of Black Falcons MC, Black Falcons Trophy Party. Bronx, 2016. ©Cate Dingley.

Categories: Art, Bronx, Brooklyn, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Bruce Davidson: Magnum Legacy

Posted on June 20, 2016

Photo: Bruce Davidson USA. New York City. 1980. Subway. ©Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos, courtesy of Prestel.

“When I was a kid, I played baseball and you heard the sound the bat made when it really connected with the ball; you knew you had a great hit. It’s the same with photography: sometimes you hear that click of the shutter and you know you’ve caught something really special,” observes American photographer Bruce Davidson (b. 1933).

Davidson, a member of Magnum Photos since 1958, authored some of the most seminal monographs of the twentieth century including Brooklyn Gang, East 100 Street, and Subway. He is now the subject of a new book, Bruce Davidson: Magnum Legacy by Vicki Goldberg (Prestel), which explores the photographer’s life work in photography. Davidson speaks with Crave about his work and about the magic of photography that kept him hooked in a career that spans six decades.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Brooklyn, Crave, Manhattan, Photography