Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton
August 14–September 26, 2010
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Chris Pape (aka Freedom) is an American painter and graffiti artist. Pape started tagging subway tunnels and subway cars in 1974 as “Gen II” before adopting the tag “Freedom”. He was a witness and a participant to the 20-year run of the New York subway graffiti movement.
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He began writing as Gen II in 1974 and finished his career on the trains in 1983 with the tag Freedom.
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Pape is best known for his numerous paintings in the eponymous Freedom Tunnel, an Amtrak tunnel running underneath Manhattan’s Riverside Park. Prominent paintings in the Freedom Tunnel attributed to Pape include his “self-portrait” featuring a male torso with a spray-can head and “There’s No Way Like the American Way” (aka “The Coca-Cola Mural”), a parody of Coca-Cola advertising and tribute to the evicted homeless of the tunnel. Another theme of Freedom’s work is black and silver recreations of classical art, including a reinterpretation of the Venus de Milo and a full train car recreation of the iconic hands from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.
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Pape will be exhibiting a self portrait from the Freedom Tunnel in “Down by Law” at the Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, opening on August 14, 2010. He has graciously agreed to speak about his work here.
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New York in the 1970s and 1980s was a city bursting with originality, innovation, and experimentation. Please talk about how you see the relationship between your early work as an artist and the environment in which it took hold.
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The great cities of the 20th century are Paris in the 20s, Berlin in the 30s, and New York in the 70s; and I guarantee you, there will never be another city like New York in the 70s. The gay rights movement, the feminist movement, punk rock, hip hop, graffiti, the blackout, Son of Sam, tabloid journalism, street gangs (in 1977 it became fashionable for gang members to walk through the streets with golf clubs), the blackout, Saturday Night Fever — Saturday Night Live — it all came out of New York!
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If there were one particular moment that defined my later work it would have to be in the 1960s. In 1965, at the age of five, my parents wouldn’t let me leave the block alone. I was allowed to go “subway fishing”, this meant laying atop a subway grating and swinging a string with gum affixed to it until it hovered over a lost coin or some other treasure and hoisting them up. These were long summer days that seemed to go on endlessly. I pulled up Indian head pennies, buffalo nickels, matchbooks, a baseball card, and other bits of junk that somehow stayed in the back of my brain until the early 80s.
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In 1980 I was already a graffiti writer doing letters on the sides of trains, I quickly found out that I could paint realistic images with spraypaint and looked for a place to do it. There was a freight train tunnel in Riverside Park where trains still ran, the gratings formed 15-foot high canvasses of light against the walls, and in those beams of light I repainted the images of my youth including a baseball card. In 1986 the homeless moved in and became known as the “Mole People”, I stopped painting and documented their lives for three years. I finished my mural work in 1995. I tell the story because I can’t think of any other city in America where something like that could’ve happened. That was New York back in the day.
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It has recently been suggested to me that the term “graffiti” is marginalizing, and loaded with negative connotations. How do you feel about the use of the word in general, as well as application to your work as an artist?
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The graffiti word is offensive, but it was the only word to describe the early stages of the movement. In 1974 the word “graffiti artist” was coined in the New York Times—that seems like a happy marriage. I don’t lose any sleep over this stuff.
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As a working artist over the past three decades, you have seen first hand how the art world—from galleries and dealers to museums and collectors—responds and reacts to contemporary American art. What are your thoughts on the differences (and similarities, if applicable) between the US, European, and Asian markets?
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I think the art world as a whole views the works of artists as commodities. Let’s not forget the lessons of the 1980s when graffiti canvases were sold for huge amounts right up until the stock market crash. Things do seem a lot more liberal in Europe where graffiti artists from New York are celebrated and have been for years.
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Who are your artistic inspirations, and how have they influenced your ideas, aesthetics, and actions through the course of your career?
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Hopper is my favorite painter, I think he tapped into the American psyche more then any other painter of the last century, but I don’t think he inspires me. I’ve bitten generously from Warhol, Oldenburg and Rosenquist, you can see the Rosenquist influence in the “Buy American” painting. Warhol and Oldenburg are there on a more spiritual level.
For “Down by Law” you will be exhibiting your self portrait from the Freedom Tunnel. Please talk about the importance of this piece, and the context in which it was created.
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The self portrait for the show was originally painted in the tunnel in 1984. At the time it wasn’t THE FREEDOM TUNNEL, it was just me doing my thing, which allowed me to fail a lot. This painting didn’t really fit in with the themes I had established, but it seemed to work and was published in a number of books. It’s a self portrait. The jacket was given to me by my parents in 1976, I left home in ’77 and lived in the jacket, quite literally. The spraycan head is an old graffiti device that seemed to describe my life at the time.
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There has been a wide array of artists to emerge from the early graffiti movement. How have your earlier experiences influenced you ideas about art, and in what direction would you like to go?
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When I left the tunnel in 1995 I was a little bit dazed. I was stuck as a painter, although I continued my visual journalism work. I did my new paintings large, and then small, in color, with a sable brush – it seemed as though nothing worked. Of course the answer was that it couldn’t work. The paintings in the tunnel are just that, there in a tunnel. In the same way that if you buy a subway graffiti artist’s work it’s best to buy an entire subway car or it loses context. I think that’s a battle that all graffiti writers that started on trains have had. I’m not saying I’ve fully overcome it but I’ve come close.
Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton
August 14–September 26, 2010
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Martha Cooper is a documentary photographer born in the 1940s in Baltimore, Maryland. She began photographing in nursery school after her father gave her a camera. She graduated from high school at the age of 16, and from Grinnell College with a degree in art at age 19. From 1963-65, she taught English as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand and then journeyed by motorcycle from Bangkok to England where she received an ethnology diploma from Oxford. She was a photography intern at National Geographic Magazine in the 1960s, and worked as a staff photographer for the Narragansett Times in Rhode Island and at the New York Post in the 1940s.
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Martha is perhaps best known for documenting the New York graffiti scene of the late 1970s and early 80s. While working for the New York Post she began taking photos of creative play on the Lower Eastside in order to use up the remaining film in her camera each day before developing it. One day she met a young boy named Edwin who showed her his drawings and explained that he was practicing to write his nickname on walls. Edwin offered to introduce her to a graffiti king. This is how she met the great stylemaster, Dondi, who eventually allowed her to photograph him in the yards at night while he was painting. In 1984, with Henry Chalfant, she published Subway Art, a landmark photo book that subsequently spread graffiti art around the world.
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In addition to publishing more than a dozen books, Martha’s photographs have appeared in innumerable magazines including National Geographic, Smithsonian and Vibe. She is the Director of Photography at City Lore, the New York Center for Urban Folk Culture. She still lives in Manhattan but is currently working on a photo project in Sowebo, a Southwest Baltimore neighborhood.
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Cooper will be exhibiting four silver gelatin prints from her early b-boy documentary work in “Down by Law” at the Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, opening on August 14, 2010. She has graciously agreed to speak about her work here.
New York in the 1970s and 1980s was a city bursting with originality, innovation, and experimentation. Please talk about how you see the relationship between your early work as a photographer and the environment in which it took hold.
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I’ve long been drawn to anything made by hand perhaps because my parents always encouraged creative play. In 1977 I began working as a staff photographer for the New York Post and the job required that we cruise around the city all day in our cars with two-way radio contact to the news desk in case there was a breaking assignment. When not on assignment we were supposed to look for feature “weather” photos. My favorite neighborhood for photos was Alphabet City on the Lower Eastside where I could almost always find kids making something from nothing.
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It has recently been suggested to me that the term “graffiti” is marginalizing, and loaded with negative connotations. How do you feel about the use of the word in general, as well as application to your work?
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Writers probably enjoy being associated with “negative connotations”. Being bad can be cool. Of course the term graffiti has been around much longer than markers and spray paint. In NYC, it’s most fitting for tags but less appropriate for sophisticated spray painted walls. Words and their connotations change over time. Just let me know what you want me to call it and I’ll be happy to oblige. If you prefer the term aerosol art, I’ll go with that stilted though it may be.
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As a working photographer over the past three decades, you have seen first hand how the art world—from galleries and dealers to museums and collectors—responds and reacts to contemporary American art. What are your thoughts on the differences (and similarities, if applicable) between the US, European, and Asian markets?
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As a documentary photographer I’ve always been more interested in publishing my photos in books and magazines than showing them in galleries. I never paid much attention to the art market until very recently. Collectors in Europe and Japan seem more eager to collect “graffiti” (should I say aerosol?) related work. I’m just happy that people anywhere enjoy looking at my pictures.
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Who are your artistic inspirations, and how have they influenced your ideas, aesthetics, and actions through the course of your career?
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My dad was an amateur photographer and he used to take me on “camera runs” with the Baltimore Camera Club so my first experience with photography was just going out looking for pictures and that’s still my approach today…
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I’m from a generation of street photographers who never studied photography. I grew up seeing photojournalism magazines like Look and Life and National Geographic and wanted to become a professional photographer so that I could travel the world. I was always more interested in thinking about what I wanted to photograph than how I was going to shoot it. It was never my intention to make art.
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For “Down by Law” you will be exhibiting your silver gelatin prints of Rock Steady Crew members Frosty Freeze, Ken Swift, Crazy Legs, and Doze Green . Please talk about your work documenting the b-boy movement, and the way in which these photographs—in particular that of Frosty—have become historic markers of the culture.
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I first encountered b-boys by chance in 1980 in Washington Heights and was so impressed that I contacted Sally Banes, a dance writer, to help me document them. It took us a year before we had enough material to publish a story. We asked Henry Chalfant to help us find dancers. He was organizing an event with graffiti, rapping and DJing and thought dance would be a great addition. Through his graffiti contacts, we met Crazy Legs.
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The resulting story in the Village Voice in April 1981 with Frosty Freeze on the cover introduced breaking and Rock Steady to the world. Because NYC is a media town, magazines and film crews quickly covered the “new” dance. Henry filmed them for his movie Style Wars as did Charlie Ahearn for Wild Style. The words “Hip Hop” were not in general use at the time but as people became more aware of the culture, breaking was included as an integral part and the Rock Steady Crew became worldwide celebrities. As far as I know my photos are the earliest documentation of b-boying.
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There has been a wide array of artists to emerge from the early graffiti and Hip-Hop movement. How have your earlier experiences documenting b-boys, young writers in the yards, and trains running along the lines influenced you ideas about art, and in what direction would you like to go?
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I don’t think a lot about art. Still photography is a wonderful way to document. In a fraction of a second the camera can capture and preserve a million details. I’m interested in using photography for historic preservation. I want people to look at my photos and get a sense of what life was like at a specific time and place.
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I’ve seen New York City change radically over the past 30 years and my photos are appreciated because they are a record of a different time. For the past 4 1/2 years I’ve been documenting a difficult neighborhood in Baltimore with a vibrant street life. My hope is that in thirty years these photos will similarly be enjoyed.
EMPIRE STATE OF MIND, a group show curated by Jacob Fuglsang Mikkelsen featuring works by Victor Bockris, Bess Greenberg, Ellen Jong, Anton Perich, Marcia Resnick opens at the Copenhagen Photo Festival, Denmark, from May 13 – 20, 2010. Marcia Resnick has graciously granted me an interview to discuss her work, “Re-visions”, which will be featured in the show.
I love the way your work explores the precocious aspects of childhood. All to often, we forget that kids have their own secret desires. What was your inspiration to revisit the private life of your childhood?
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Marcia Resnick: In 1975, while driving my car in Manhattan, I became embroiled in a car accident which left me unconscious and internally bleeding. When I awoke in the hospital, my entire life flashed before me. I began to think about all of the events which led to my being there, daily dissecting my life with a linear historical perspective. After I returned home, I began to write ideas and draw pictures in preparation for doing a book which considered my life thus far, with both a sense of poignancy and irony.
I like how you subvert the seeming purity of 1950s America, particularly with the cowgirl and Howdy Doody images. What was it like growing up at that time, and how did it inform your work as an artist?
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MR: I was raised in a middle class home in suburban Brooklyn by Jewish American parents who were very strict and authoritarian. Television was a large component of life in the 1950’s…Hopalong Cassidy, Howdy Doody and the more artistically stimulating Winky Dinks and Jon Gnagy were fixtures in my childhood, in addition to the popular playthings advertised on television such as slinky toys and hula hoops. I had a special fondness for Jon Gnagy and religiously learned how to draw by watching him on television.
The piece that explores the fear of being wallflower within the company of children at the school dance is the perfect foil to the image that has your subject being told not to look at her feet in the company of adults. I find it interesting that in one context the girl is an extrovert; in another she is an introvert. Please speak more about this dynamic.
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MR: Peer pressure has always been a motivating factor influencing the behavior of children. The desire to be liked by other children is quite different though than the desire for the approval of adults. This dynamic speaks to this difference.
For your piece captioned “She was often gripped with the desire to be elsewhere”, how did that desire take you to New York City?
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MR: That desire took me “all the way” from Brooklyn to Manhattan when I moved there at sixteen years old to study art at NYU and then, Cooper Union after which I went to graduate school in California at California Institute of the Arts. That desire also took me to Europe, Mexico, Central America, Morocco, Egypt and the South Seas and Japan and China in years to come.
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This work was made in 1978, a very edgy period in New York City’s history. Did your environment in any way play into the themes you are exploring here?
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MR: I moved to Tribeca in 1975. I was teaching photography at Queens College and NYU. I did the bulk of the work on “Re-visions” in 1976. It took two years to get it published, during which time I frequented artist’s bars and music clubs at night and Soho art galleries on weekends. There was a palpable electricity in the cultural milieu of NYC at that time. The downtown artists scene was a hotbed of aesthetic creativity. I drew inspiration from the contemporary art and music scenes.
va va voooom! miss MARIPOL is THE BOMB. the sexy kind.
i must have taken more then ten photos of KWAME BRATHWAITE, but he was a sweetheart about it
MARCIA RESNICK was totally dressed to ROCK, i stalked her a little to get this pic
not only is MASAYOSHI SUKITA awesome for coming all the way from Japan, he was a perfect gentleman, with a chic Asian posse in tow.. my camera and i timidly bowed a couple of times in thanks
GODLIS is the kind of photographer who’d have amazing stories about Rock and Roll in NYC back in the 80s- come hear him talk with Gail Buckland on November 10th .
who better to stand with miss Tina than the photographer himself, HENRY DILTZ
oops i accidentally disturbed ELAINE MAYES while she was doing her own documenting of the show to get her photograph hehe
i adore LAURA LEVINE’S work, so much that i blocked out the dude’s photograph below hers hahaha (jk)
BOB SEIDEMANN is my favorite of the night. he coached me for like 10 minutes in taking this photo, all the while making me giggle like an Asian schoolgirl, he was SO FUNNY!
EDWARD COLVER’S photograph is sooo intense, they made a shirt out of it- in the Brooklyn Museum ROCK SHOP!
CHRIS STEIN and JOHN HOLMSTROM were the perfect duo of ROCK & ROLL
Who Shot Rock & Roll A Photographic History, 1955–Present
By Gail Buckland
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BEHIND THE SCENES WITH
ELIZABETH MURRAY FINKELSTEIN
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Nat Finkelstein, American photographer and photojournalist, was born in Brooklyn in 1933. Starting off as a student of the legendary art director of Harper’s Bazaar, Alexey Brodovitch, Finkelstein worked for agencies like The Black Star and PIX. However Finkelstein is probably best known for his work with Andy Warhol, as his ‘unofficial’ in- house photographer, which is nowadays recognized as some of the best photographic work of the 20th century. Since then, Finkelstein has exhibited his work worldwide; among many other locations, his photographs are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, and The Andy Warhol Foundation, New York; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Nat Finkelstein passed away in early October 2009 in his home in Upstate New York. He was 76 years old.
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Elizabeth Murray Finkelstein discusses her husband’s work, Velvet Underground and Friends, 1966, selected for publication in Who Shot Rock & Roll by Gail Buckland (Knopf, October 2009, $40).
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I can imagine you must have mixed emotions, with Nat having recently passed, and the responsibility of running his archive falling to you just as Who Shot Rock & Roll launches. How do you feel about being the spokesperson on behalf of Nat and his work?
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Elizabeth Murray Finkelstein: Nat and I had a pact through our marriage: I would protect both his art and his legacy. Because he was significantly older than me—he died at 76, I’m 35—we knew the reality of the situation. I would live to carry on his work, a responsibility I take very seriously.
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When I met Nat, he was living in a horrible situation, in a gross apartment under the BQE, depressed and with few prospects for the future. I looked around through this squalid place and there was his artwork. I recognized genius and asked him, “You did all THIS?” And Nat answered, “Yeah, but nobody cares.” He broke my heart. With that, I made it our mission to get his life together and to re-establish him as an ARTIST. I think we did OK.
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This project really brings my relationship to Nat full circle, as it was through his work at The Factory in the mid 60s that we first connected. Although neither you nor I were there for it, Nat sure as hell was, and though he is gone, his work continues to live on. Can you describe for us how Nat felt about photographing the Factory and its denizens?
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Ironically, perhaps, Nat and Andy Warhol had a common background. Both were children of the Depression, of working class families, who found their voice through their vision. Nat respected Andy – I think Nat knew where Andy was coming from, as an artist and maybe also as a person. Nat was a well-established photojournalist in the 1960s, and Andy knew Nat’s name through photo credits in magazines. When they met, both probably recognized the mutual benefit. I’ve reminded a few haters that it was Andy who wanted Nat at the Factory. And Nat knew a good story when he saw one.
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There were qualities of the Factory that Nat really loved: brilliant art, beautiful women, and the Velvet Underground. These are the subjects on which he focused his camera. But he believed the Factory ultimately represented the soft underbelly of the American underground. In 1965, Nat was also photographing, and organizing anti-Vietnam War and civil rights activity—ugly scenes of young and old violently oppressed by the powers that were. In contrast, Nat said that political struggle was of no concern at the silver Factory, where celebrity for its own sake was a common goal. He derisively called the arch-scenesters “the Satellites”—those who existed only to revolve around a bigger star.
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Nat described the Velvet Underground as “the psychopath’s Rolling Stones.” Please elaborate…
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The Psychopath’s Rolling Stones… Ha! In 1966, Nat used that phrase in his book proposal for the Andy Warhol Index. He was a huge fan of the Rolling Stones, so he wasn’t being derogatory or demeaning—he was being pithy. However, Nat told me that Lou Reed was totally offended when he read this. Obviously, the VU were doing their own thing, but Lou thought the comparison to the Stones diminished their uniqueness. And so, as per Nat, Lou Reed responded, “The three worst people in the world are Nat Finkelstein and two speed dealers.” Touché! Nat claimed Lou never forgave him for the “psychopath” quote. That’s sad, because Nat truly cared for the VU as people, as individuals. He was proud of their accomplishments. But he felt he had been iced out—dismissed or betrayed. In the last years of Nat’s life, Eden Cale, daughter of John, became our very close friend. Nat and John reconnected through Eden, which meant a lot to Nat.
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Critic Ian Johnston describes Nat’s photo of the Velvet Underground as “…among the best ever portraits of a rock band, exuding sleaze, menace, and decadent glamour.” What are your thoughts on this image, and how well it has stood the test of time?
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Nat has maybe 1,000 photographs of the VU—everything from group shots, to performances, to candid portraits of the individuals. As a photographic study of a rock & roll band—a body of work—it may be unparalleled in scope.
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The image in Who Shot Rock & Roll was from a group portrait session; we have a few contact sheets from this shoot, which we referred to as “VU with Vox.” As for the far-reaching influence of these photos, I’m reminded of an email we got several years ago. A VU fan from England, I believe, wrote to ask if Nat had any photographs of the Vox speaker by itself. The fan wanted to know if a legend about the alteration of the Vox knobs was true, and if Nat had photographic evidence. Nat’s response was, “Do you want to buy a photograph?” To which the fan responded, “I just want to know if the story is true.”
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I was a fan of the Velvet Underground long before I knew Nat Finkelstein. I didn’t know Nat’s name. I certainly didn’t know he would be my husband—but I knew his pictures. Nat’s photographs are the visual component to the VU story. Despite the arguments and estrangements, Nat and the VU are inextricably linked in history. As long as the Velvet Underground is relevant, which I imagine is forever, Nat’s photographs will remain relevant, too. Great art is timeless.
“I don’t usually speak about things that are true and important to me very often,” reveals Pedro Paricio. “When I was younger, I talked about myself all the time until I discovered that people prefer to speak about themselves. It was then that I stopped speaking and started listening. It is much better this way. ”
Born January 16, 1982 in the Canary Islands, an archipelago of seven islands of volcanic origin in the Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of Africa, Paricio was raised in La Orotava, a little village in the valley on the island of Tenerife (home to El Teide, the highest mountain in Spain). Though its 35,000 inhabitants may seem small by metropolitan standards, it is one of the largest villages on the island. While technology has provided a means for advancement, daily life is deeply rooted in the local traditions of the past, particularly those from the Venezuelan C culture. “I always say we are closer to Venezuelathan we are to the rest of Spain,” Paricio observes. “I don’t think of myself as Spanish. I always think of myself as a Canarian.”
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For Paricio, life in the Canary Islands is without stress. A tropical paradise, La Orotava offered mountains, beaches, surfing, good food, beautiful people, and relaxation. Less expensive than Barcelona, one does not need to earn a lot of money to live well. On the flipside, La Orotava offers little contemporary culture. “There are always a group of people trying to make new music and art, but there is little or no support from the public,” Paricio explains. “Those in my generation who want to experiment must leave the island and travel to Spain or Europe in order to do so.” After beginning his art studies at the College of Fine Arts in Tenerife, Paricio left the island to study art in Salamanca, an ancient city built during the Roman Empire in the center of Spain. He finished his studies at the University of Barcelona with a degree in Fine Arts in 2006.
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To support himself as an artist, Paricio has done countless jobs which include delivering pizza, working in a restaurant kitchen, waiting tables at a luxury restaurant, dressing up as a clown for children’s birthday parties, entertaining for Havana Club (the Cuban rum), working in a bookstore, working as a gamekeeper, unloading trucks, assisting photographers, being a curator, journalist, art editor, and advertising salesman… amongst many other things.
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As an artist, Paricio has worked in sculpture, video, and performance but, as he notes, “With painting I am totally free. I only need a white surface, paint, and a brush. I don’t need big tools or much money, only my mind and my time. Painting is our oldest art (you may remember out ancestors painting in caves). It is part of our DNA code.” Describing his work as “ Abstract Street/Pop Art,” Paricio appropriates cultural references to title his paintings, linking his paintings directly to our shared cultural history. For example, he takes Tian Zhuangzhuang’s film, “Dao Ma Zei” and translates it into “El Ladron de Caballos” for one work. “I love this film,” Paricio explains, “so I put this title to my painting. You can say that I am a thief of names. I create paintings, not names.”
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An admirer of 20th century masters Joseph Beuys, Andy Warhol, Mark Rothko, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paricio also studies the works of Spanish legends Velazquez and Goya. “I want to mix street art with traditional art to show the power of abstract art. I want to combine the ideas of Clement Greenberg with the style of Keith Haring. I love critical theory and art theory so much I had considered becoming a curator rather than a painter. But I need to create, to explain something, and my paintings are the vehicle for that. I love the freedom of abstraction and I love the power of materials and color. But I do not believe abstract art is a new world; it is a world inside the world in which it was born and provides a new vision of the world in which we are all living. It is freedom from the structure of the mind and of the computerized world. We are caught in a system and live together in a comfortable world where we want easy culture. We want only to make beautiful and funny things. But I want to think and develop my mind, to free it from its confines. I want to open the secret door. ”
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Paricio describes his painting as the search for a hidden truth beneath the obvious reality we share, a truth to which conventional means will not provide us access. Consider his metaphor of an acid trip: “If you have tested it, you know that the world can change, not just in your eyes but in your mind. When you are on a trip, a car is a car, but you know that it means more than the superficial definition. You realize its symbolism, it’s meaning to both the individual and the masses. You know that it means more than you will ever understand and you accept that. And when the trip is finished, the world is not the same place it was when you left.”
Godlis began photographing at CBGB’s in 1976. As a refugee of the New York City street photography scene, his work reveals an infatuation with Leica cameras, long handheld exposures, and Brassai’s classic night photographs of the 1930s. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, in the landmark 1981 show “New Wave/New York: at P.S.1, New Museum of Contemporary Art, CBGB 313 Gallery, and Pace MacGill Gallery, all in New York; and at Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie, Arles.
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Godlis discusses his work, Blondie, CBGB’s, New York City, 1977, and Patti Smith Outside CBGB’s, Bowery and Bleecker Street, New York City, 1976, selected for publication in Who Shot Rock & Roll by Gail Buckland (Knopf, October 2009, $40).
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What lead you to study photography at Imageworks and what were your aspirations when you first entered the discipline?
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Godlis: Well, seeing Antonioni’s “Blow Up” was probably pretty key to me getting interested in photography. David Hemmings as David Bailey in his darkroom in swinging London, with the club appearance by the Yardbirds—not to mention Vanessa Redgrave and Jane Birkin; that made photography look pretty cool.
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I got my first camera at the end of the summer of 1970. I was living in Boston and immediately began shooting black & white pictures of all my friends. I became fascinated by the cult of the camera itself. I started educating myself by picking up old Photography Annuals and hanging out looking at photo books at the library. I was clearly obsessed with what this “photography” thing was, so I took a basic course in 1972 to actually get inside a darkroom.
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Right around that time, I took a trip to NYC to the Museum of Modern Art, where I was stunned by the Diane Arbus 1972 exhibition. For me that was a defining moment, where my fascination with photography crossed paths with the rock aesthetic I had grown up around. Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man” was cut from the same cloth as Diane Arbus’ “Jewish Giant with Parents.” So that exhibition, along with the first time I saw Cartier-Bresson’s “Decisive Moment” was the turning point for me.
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After that I needed a place to really learn how to learn about the art of photography. Imageworks was where I landed in the fall of 1974. Imageworks was in East Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was the kind of experimental photography school that really flourished in the early 70s—an art school devoted totally to photography—where a group of like-minded kids with cameras showed up to pick up skills and share ideas. Teachers came in from RISD in Providence and SVA in NYC. My first class, my first day—Nan Goldin and Stanley Greene were both beginner photographers in that class—was like jumping into a cold pool. It was all photography all the time, and I couldn’t get enough of it.
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Imageworks was where that I began to learn how to really look at photographs—Robert Frank, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, Brassai, Kertesz, Atget, Weegee. My greatest teacher was Paul Krot from RISD, who invented the Sprint chemicals I still use. He cut through all the crap and made it very clear what was important to know. And there really was a cult of straight “street photography” at Imageworks. That’s what really interested me, and that’s how I saw myself, in that pre-Post Modern era: the lonely street photographer with camera conquering the world.
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I hung around Imageworks until it imploded and shut down during the recession of 1975, and then packed up my gear and headed to NYC to shoot on the streets of New York and look for work as an assistant.
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NYC, 1976, Abbie Hoffman’s old St. Marks Place apartment!! It couldn’t be more fitting. Gail quotes you as saying, “I wasn’t a rock photographer. I photographed a scene.” What attracted you to the East Village in 1976, and to its underground HQ, CBGB’s?
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When I got to NYC in 1976, I was looking for work as a photographer’s assistant to pay the bills. Eventually I landed a steady job, and looked for a place to hang out and hear music. There weren’t very many clubs that didn’t have cover bands, and I’d seen that picture of Patti Smith and Bob Dylan that kind of tipped me off to CBGB’s, so I went in there to see what was going on. I had also seen copies of Punk magazine and Rock Scene at a newsstand at Penn Station. The first time I went to CBGB’s I saw Television and figured out pretty quickly that there were some like-minded Velvet Underground fans in this place. I had found my new hangout. It didn’t hurt that I got in for free.
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But I didn’t really go there to photograph, I went there to hear music and meet people. It was late one night at the bar that I had this epiphany that maybe I should be photographing the place. If I could photograph it at night under natural light exactly the way it looked—I had been looking at Brassai’s night pictures of Paris in the 1930s at the time—that would be something no one else was doing. And if I didn’t do it who would? I didn’t want to be a rock photographer. I didn’t want to be Annie Liebowitz. I wanted to be Brassai!
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As far as St. Marks Place goes, I used to go down there in the 60s when I was a teenager and always loved the block so it wasn’t that far fetched to go looking for an apartment there. It was close to the Bowery and CBGB’s where I was spending all my time, and the rent was cheap. Roberta Bayley lived upstairs in the same building, so we could share darkroom chemicals. What I didn’t expect was that I would end up in Abbie Hoffman’s old apartment. I found that out years later, when we went on rent strike and one of my neighbors told me that Abbie had gone underground from there. It’s always felt like a lot of history passed through that place.
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Your epiphany, to photograph New York at night, and to explore the issues of film, paper, and exposure, are what set apart your work from so many others. Your work with light at night is exciting, can you speak about the different challenges you faces with the conditions of the street and nightclub environments?
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I was committed to shooting by natural light at night—no flash—so I was already painting myself into a corner. But it was my corner and no one else’s. If you use a flash, it’s like turning a light on in a room that’s already lit a certain way and I definitely didn’t want to do that. But I made it work for me. I wanted my pictures to look exactly the way things looked at CBGB’s, at that time and place.
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I was already shooting with a Leica camera, which I could hold steady at slow shutter speeds. But the problem was determining the right combination of shutter speeds, f/stop, and film developing. That took weeks of testing. I was like a mad scientist in the darkroom, trying variations of mixing chemicals to push the Tri-x film until I got enough on the negative to make a good print. Then testing out papers to come up with the right look. It really paid off, in that it gave my pictures a unique look. I didn’t even know what they would look like until I figured it all out. But once I figured it out, I was free to shoot at night indoors, onstage and off, and outdoors with people lit up by the Bowery streetlights.
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I had to shoot at ¼-second exposure handheld, so I had to remind people—drunk people—to hold still. But that worked to my benefit too. What was great was that the prints glowed. They looked great at night, when I showed them to people in the club. The darkroom light was the same as the club lighting. The magazines in America thought they were blurry grainy shots because they didn’t look like flash photos but in England and France they loved them.
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Now for the people who were there in 1976-79, they tell me the pictures look exactly like what they remember of CBGB’s. And for people who weren’t there, the pictures show them what it would have been like to be there. That was what I wanted to do—to show what the present will look like as the past. That’s the essence of my type of photography.
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How did the people on the scene connect to the work you were doing?
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I used to go down to CBGB’s every night with a box of pictures to show people what I was doing. Inevitably I left with fewer pictures than I showed up with—I gave many away. But over time, everyone in the club knew what I was doing and wanted to be part of it. There were no digital backs on the cameras back then. So you had to develop and print the work yourself every day.
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The way the pictures were printed made them look especially good under the club lighting. I remember Bob Gruen telling me one night—I was so impressed that this was the actual Bob Gruen—that he used to do the same thing, bringing pictures down to clubs and showing them to everyone when he started out. That meant a lot to me, and everyone’s reaction at CBGB’s spurred me on.
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Handsome Dick Manitoba’s finding my stolen wallet and returning it to me at CBGB’s one night in 1976 led me to do that picture of him and his girlfriend Jody in front of CB’s to return the favor. Television called me to do their photograph for the second album, which led to the pictures of Richard Lloyd at in the hospital. Tapping Patti Smith on the shoulder one night outside CBGB’s and asking to take her photograph lit up by the Bowery streetlamps led to one of my most memorable photographs. I remember talking with Alex Chilton in 1977 and being totally impressed by his stories of photographer William Eggleston, whom he’d known in Memphis—which led to us doing the photograph of him where a drop of rain magically landed on the lens. We really all worked off of each other every night at CBGB’s—just like the bands worked off of their audiences.
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I love your little story about Robert Frank, could you retell it here?
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Well I was such a big fan of Robert Frank since my time at Imageworks and so much of what I was doing at CBGB’s was influenced, both consciously and unconsciously, by him. I knew The Americans and Lines of My Hand inside out. His photograph of the kids with the jukebox from The Americans, I wanted to make that photograph inside CBGB’s. I had seen him speak in 1975 at Wellesley College right after Walker Evans had died, when he showed a reel of the banned Rolling Stones film.
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But now here I was shooting at CBGB’s in 1977 and in walks Robert Frank, right past the front desk. I was stunned. I was the only one there who recognized him. But to me, one of my biggest influences had just walked into the place, where I was shooting pictures totally influenced by him. At that time I didn’t have any idea that he lived around the corner on Bleecker Street! I remember he asked me what was going on here, and he said in his Swiss accent, “It looks like de way people dress here is very important.”
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Then everyone around me wanted to know who is this guy. I said incredulously, “That’s Robert Frank!” Well no one knew who that was. So I said, “Robert Frank, The Americans?” No reaction. “Cocksucker Blues”? Still no reaction. Then “Exile on Main Street?” Well that was a pretty influential album on the punk scene in 77, so when I said he did the cover for that album, it clicked and people said, “Oh yeah—he’s very cool! What’s his name?”
Chris Stein, guitarist and songwriter, was born in Brooklyn. In the early 70s, Stein joined the glam-rock group the Stilettos, which featured Deborah Harry as its lead singer. After the Stilettos fell apart, Stein and Harry formed the hugely popular and successful punk/New Wave band Blondie. Stein wrote the hit song “Sunday Girl,” and co-wrote, with his onetime-girlfriend Harry, Blondie hit songs including “Heart of Glass,” “Dreaming,” “Rapture,” “Picture This,” “Rip Her to Shreds,” and “Island of Lost Souls.” He ran the label Animal Records from 1982 to 1984, and also did the album cover for “Exposure,” Robert Fripp’s solo album, the first record cover done will all color Xeroxes. Stein not only composed the scores for the films “Union City” and “Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story,” but also was a co-composer on the scores for the movie “Wild Style” and the TV special “When Disco Ruled the World.” In the late 90s Chris and Harry relaunched Blondie; since then the group has recorded two albums and continues to perform in concert all over the world. Stein, also a longtime photographer, has done album artwork for Lydia Lunch and Dramarama.
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Stein discusses his works collaborations with John Holmstrom for PUNK magazine, Richard Hell and Debbie Harry, Seventeenth Street, New York City, “The Legend of Nick Detroit,” and Anya Phillips and Debbie Harry,” selected for publication in Who Shot Rock & Roll by Gail Buckland (Knopf, October 2009, $40).
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You are a musician as well as a photographer, which gives you a unique insight into the relationship between photography and music. How do you feel the image impacts the listener’s understanding of the music?
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Chris Stein: I have never figured out or decided if image was a plus or a minus when it comes to defining one’s musical style. I often say in interviews that when I was a teenager “most of my heroes were 60 year old black men.” This of course is a reference to trends that embrace only youth and fancy fashion as the mark of success. Recently much was made of the dowdy matron who appeared on some TV talent show and was endowed with a terrific singing voice. But there the context was all about her unattractiveness, which then became her selling point thereby negating the whole argument. Very weird!
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Your photographs in Who Shot Rock & Roll feature the distinctive graphics of John Holmstrom. They are unlike any other image in the book, as they show your willingness to collaborate with yet another artist in the creation of the image. How did you come to create these images—clearly they were staged, but did you have the end product in mind when you set out to shoot, or was this something that came about through the process of creation itself?
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Going into the various PUNK magazine projects with John, I was already familiar with the form: that of the Fumetti, a photo story that was laid out like a comic strip, often with speech balloons for the characters. Fumettis began, I think, in the early 60s and are currently more popular in Latin America and Europe than in the U.S. John Holmstrom was a source of many terrific ideas and working with a large number of our peers from the rock scene in NYC was great fun! In many of the photos I left room for the speech balloons when composing the shot.
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What advantages do you see in shooting your own band and artistic coterie instead of having someone from the outside doing it?
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Just the familiarity between us makes it easier to shoot candid moments.
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In the days before the Internet and digital photography, when content was seemingly limited to those with access, the creation of images played a massive role in the music. How does your work contribute to this archive?
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Because Debbie was so photogenic and appealing in pictures it was easy to disseminate shots of her to the media early on. Many people saw her image before hearing the bands music. During the 70s in the UK the weekly national music press didn’t have an equivalent in the U.S. and because of this many bands were visually available to British music fans prior to those bands music being heard or played on radio. This phenomenon certainly contributed to the popularity of “punk,” which relied heavily on elements of fashion to define itself.
Kate Simon was born and raised in upstate New York. Her father, medical doctor and amateur photographer, introduced her early on to photography. In the late 1970s Simon photographed the pioneers in Reggae Music including Bob Marley, Lee “Scratch” Perry , Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, Burning Spear, and many more. She took some of the most amazing documentary photographs of Bob Marley and the Wailers during various tours and day-to-day life. Simon’s shots are occasionally candid, catching her subjects in intensely personal moments. She has captured photographs of almost every occasion in Bob Marley’s life including celebrations, shock, football games, his funeral and more. She can name claim to the most famous portrait of Bob Marley ever taken, the front cover of the “Kaya” album. Her photos of the 1977 Exodus tour are perhaps the most astonishing of all and are a tour de force in documentary photography.
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Simon discusses her work, Bunny Wailer, Kingston, Jamaica, 1976, selected for publication in Who Shot Rock & Roll by Gail Buckland (Knopf, October 2009, $40).
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In the book, Gail quotes you as saying, “You can’t make a picture happen. [the person has to] give it to you and you have to be ready for it.” I would love if you could talk about that shoot with Bunny Wailer, about your experience, about who you are and who he is, and how your collaboration made that image possible.
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Kate Simon: Well that is a damn good question. Certainly a picture of its time, it was shot in 1976. First of all it is certainly that Bunny Wailer had just put out one the absolute hallmark corner stone record of Roots Rock Reggae called “Blackheart Man.” Bunny Wailer was one of the original Wailers with Peter Tosh and Bob Marley. His singing and his falsetto and his heart, it was just an unbelievable voice. It’s nothing like what his face in that photograph would suggest because it is really soft and just angelic. You can really hear it in “Reincarnated Souls,” “Hallelujah Time,” and “Pass It On” and in the other really well known Wailer songs.
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I was living in England at the time as a photographer for one of the weeklies in the music business. Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records, sent me down to Jamaica. I got there as the sole photographer and there were two journalists and all three of us were waiting for Bunny to come down from the hills, because he lived in Bull Bay, about nine miles outside Kingston and we waited at Tommy Cowan’s yard. Tommy Cowan was literally the Bill Graham of Jamaican Roots Rock Reggae circuit 1976. He had this office where Jacob Miller, Gregory Isaacs, Peter Tosh, Robbie Shakespeare—everyone that created this genre of music hung out.
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I had to wait for Bunny for a week. I waited and when he got there I was ready and I would say so was he. This whole week that we were waiting he was thinking about what he wanted to project to us journalists who were waiting for him. Bunny finally did come with the intention to give me photographs. He was really pitching these really intense images my way. What a face, what intelligence, what fire beneath. He was really clear in regard to who he was and who he was going to give to me. It was not a game face though; it felt very authentic. The only thing that I would say that was to my credit is that I was not intimidated. I will never forget it. It was to this day one of my favorite sessions.
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Most of the people that lived then are dead now: Peter Tosh, Dennis Brown, Jacob Miller, Augustus Pablo, Bob Marley, the fathers of this genre of music. Bunny Wailer is extremely alive right now, and he was alive then. I am so grateful to him. It was a really effective exchange. He could tell I was getting it and that is why he gave me some more. Every shot was good and every picture was good. One shot builds to the next shot, and with the energy you know when it is working. The subject knows when it is working and you know when it is working. It is hard work for both, but it is great. You are in the zone.
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I want to talk to you about what Gail is doing with the book. Her idea is to move past the genre of rock photography. One of the things that I got really into when talking with her about it, was the idea that with music and photography that there is actually a place where the two meet. The image is so essential to our understanding of music. You as a photographer become a contributor, a collaborator in the experience of the music.
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Arguably, a lot of us photographers who are drawn to shoot these musicians have their own kind of rhythmic sense. Don’t you think there is a rhythm to communication, don’t you think a stranger picks up. As a photographer it is your job to make a stranger trust you, respect you and like you, I mean instantaneously. You are throwing your own rhythm to the subject and then they are responding to it, it is utterly rhythmic and it is energetic and it is an exchange of energy. Being sensitive and appreciative of the music makes you be able to approach them.
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You shot Bob Marley’s album cover. This is before the Internet and before CDs. One part of a record before the 80s was not just the packaging of it but the communication of their message.
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I can remember the person who showed me the “Are You Experienced” album cover, delivering it like it was the tablets of Moses. The famous cover that you are referring to is “Kaya” after which they started to use my pictures on other albums. As an artist it feels great to me, Bob Marley was the unbelievable photo subject because he was completely respectful of photography as a vocation, he understood that it was real work. He really let me know that I was welcome whenever he was around. That was just so freeing and so helpful. It was significant to me in regard to my growth as a photographer because I tried all these new ways of shooting and new kinds of film because this subject Bob Marley so inspired me and I knew that he would not stop me, I knew that he would be with me and encourage me. He was a sent-from-heaven subject. He was just like you would imagine: a very conscious, empathetic, spiritual, really positive person. I think it is a gift from God to be identified with a person that I think so highly of, so many years later.
Roberta Bayley reigns supreme as one of the principal photographers who served as a significant visual chronicler of the punk rock music movement that lasted from the mid-70s up until the early-80s. Bayley worked as a door person at the legendary CBGB’s where she befriended the scene’s most significant figures. Among the punk music artists she has photographed are Iggy Pop, Blondie, Richard Hell, Elvis Costello, The Sex Pistols, Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers, Joe Strummer, The Ramones, Nick Lowe, The Damned, The Clash, The Dead Boys, and The New York Dolls. The chief photographer for Punk magazine, Bayley’s photographs have appeared in countless publications including Blank Generation Revisited: The Early Days of Punk, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk, and CBGB and OMFUG: Thirty Years from the Home of Underground Punk, among others. Bayley co-wrote the book Patti Smith: An Unauthorized Biography with Victor Bockris, and is author of Blondie: Unseen 1976–1980. Her photographs have been exhibited in such major cities as New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, Austin, Paris, Portland, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, Mexico City, and Pittsburgh.
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Bayley discusses her work, The Heartbreakers, 1975, and The Ramones, New York City, 1976, selected for publication in Who Shot Rock & Roll by Gail Buckland (Knopf, October 2009, $40).
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The images Gail selected for the book, The Heartbreakers and The Ramones, are among the most iconic images of punk. Your personal history, working at CBGB’s and photographing the artists (your friends) at the dawn of their careers, put you at the eye of the hurricane (a position I, and many others I am quite sure, look at with envy and awe). Your work is as essential to the scene as the music itself. What did these pictures mean to you when you made them, and has that meaning changed over time, as the photographs have grown into icons?
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Roberta Bayley: I made the Ramones image for a shoot for Punk magazine. It was never meant to be the album cover, so there was no pressure on me. John Holmstrom and Legs McNeil were there and we knew the Ramones so it wasn’t a high stress session. The Ramones record company, SIRE, had already hired a “professional” photographer to shoot the album cover but the band hated the photos and were desperate enough to call me! I was paid $125 for that image and one other to be used for publicity—take it or leave it. I took it. As soon as it was released I knew somehow that it was iconic. Over the years many people, especially in England, told me they were “gobsmacked” seeing the cover, and bought the record just because of that image. There has never been another image of the Ramones that captures that particular perfect moment.
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The Heartbreakers “blood” photo is completely different in it’s origin than the Ramones image. This image was taken from a session that was (literally) the fourth roll of film through my camera! It was taken in my then-unfurnished, brand new apartment on St. Marks Place (where I still live). The blood concept was Richard Hell’s, taken from the product used to simulate blood in 50s B-movies (it was actually Hershey’s syrup). The photo was used for a New Year’s Eve poster with the phrase “Catch Them While They’re Still Alive”—playing on the band’s reputation as heavy drug users.
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The Heartbreakers image did not become “iconic” until it was used for the cover of Please Kill Me in 1996. That book was issued in England, France, Germany, Japan, and Finland, and is still in print. So the image has become associated with that classic book about punk.
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I have always loved the dirty glamour, casual formality, and inescapable individuality your subjects exude. As much as these two images were photo shoots for the bands, there’s nothing contrived about these images. Whether it’s Joey Ramone’s smirk or Johnny Thunder’s bravado, the images feel like they are playing to you, connecting to you, rather than to the camera. What was the energy on these shoots, and how did your personal relationships affect your connection to them?
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The people I photographed back then were people I knew, and had known, for a few years. Most of them (all of them?) were not experienced in front of the camera, nor was I experienced behind the camera. We were all winging it. I had a natural talent for relaxing my subjects. Also I worked quickly. Most of my subjects didn’t really love the photo experience. They were musicians and not models. So I tried to relax people, take the photo and end it. I’m sure there was also an element of flirtation involved, which is part of relaxing your subject, along with humor.
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Punk came out of NYC at its grimiest. How did your work reflect the times you were living in (and by that I mean, how did you make a living being a photographer in NYC back in the 70s)?
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I had no idea that New York was at its nadir when I arrived in 1974. I had just arrived from London and New York seemed vibrant and fabulous to me!
I did NOT make a living as a photographer in the 70s! I always had another “day job.” Until 1978 it was CBGB’s and then I worked for Blondie for a year (for $150 a week!). It was only in 2004 that I quit my various day jobs and have made a living solely from my “art”!
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You describe working at Punk as a form of “creative insanity.” Can you add to this, I am curious as to how the insanity nurtured and impacted your work?
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John and Legs were both a few years younger than me, and they brought a lot of originality and enthusiasm to what they were trying to do with Punk. They didn’t break the rules so much as they had no idea there WERE any rules! Plus there was zero money, which always fuels creativity. Hey, the magazine’s original headquarters was called “the dump” and it was. Three of them lived there and there was no shower. They used to go over to Nancy Spungen’s to bathe. The most fun came out of the “fumettis” which were like movies or comic books in still-photo form. We tried to shoot “on location” as much as possible but if something didn’t work out John could always draw in the special effects later. It was damn good fun and everybody on the scene wanted to be involved. We got people to do crazy things in the name of “art.”
