Posts from the “Fashion” Category

Christopher Makos: White Trash Uncut

Posted on July 30, 2015

Debbie Harry. Photo by Christopher Makos

New York, 1977. It began with a book, a paperback with black and white photographs of the punk scene. The book was titled White Trash and it featured the boldest of the boldface names: Patti Smith, Richard Hell, Debbie Harry, Halston, Andy Warhol, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Divine, and John Waters. Add to that a splash of Man Ray, Tennessee Williams, and Marilyn Chambers, and you’ve nailed it. White Trash, Christopher Makos’ photography book, is the place where pop meets pulp, perfectly defining the D.I.Y. ethos of the times. The book has become a seminal volume of the times and now sells for upwards of $500.

However, the original edition is a paperback, and paperbacks are not designed to last. They’re disposable (like, say, white trash). And if you crack the spine too wide, the entire thing might fall apart in your hands. We are fortunate, then, that Glitterati Incorporated has released a revised and expanded edition in hardcover.

White Trash Uncut, Makos’ updated monograph, is a lavish affair. This tall, slim volume features the photographs uncropped (unlike the 1977 edition). It also features a selection of never-before-published photographs of Grace Jones, among others. Included throughout the book is the use of silver, making the pages come alive. Everything about the book is luxurious, and in that way it becomes a statement of the times. Punk has passed; that New York is long gone. But what lives in its place are photographs, memories, and stories.

Read the Full Story at CRAVE ONLINE

David Croland and Grace Jones wearing a Le Jardin shirt. New York. Photo by Chrostopher Makos

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Crave, Fashion, Manhattan, Photography

Fresh Dressed: Directed by Sacha Jenkins

Posted on June 29, 2015

CNN Films: Fresh Dressed- Classic street style; Brooklyn New York, circa 1986.
Photograph by Jamel Shabazz

“Being fresh is more important than having money. I only wanted money so I could be fresh,” Kanye West says with the utmost conviction. Dressed in all white, Kanye is sitting in on the deck of a beach house, somewhere where the skies are blue and the water is clean, and drops bon mots like this for the camera. Yeezy is just one of the many moguls, masterminds, and pioneers in Sacha Jenkins’ documentary film, Fresh Dressed, which premiered at the SVA Theater, New York, on June 18 and releases nationwide on June 26, 2015.

The theater was a who’s who of legends who created the form of Hip Hop that took the world by storm. As KRS-One said, “Rap is something you do. Hip Hop is something you live.” This way of being was very much in evidence in the crowd, filled with the artists, musicians, and designers who have defined Hip Hop style. It was a veritable who’s who of fashion visionaries including Dapper Dan, Karl Kani, Mark Ecko, April Walker, Shirt King Phade, and Jorge Fabel Pabon, among others, people who revolutionized the look, feel, and availability of mainstream apparel as well as couture pieces.

Nasir Jones, executive producer of the film, was sitting in the audience as Sacha Jenkins took the stage before the screening began to welcome the audience and say a few words. Wearing a Public School shorts-suit, bow tie, and plaid shirt with red kicks, Jenkins was handed the mic and asked, “You know my first question, right? Is Queens in the house?” The call was answered enthusiastically by the audience. Jenkins did roll call, then he broke it down, introducing Nas by saying, “He went to the same shitty junior high school as I did…The guidance counselors told me the best way to make it in life was vocational jobs. None had any expectations of us.”

Read the Full Story at CRAVE

CNN Films: Fresh Dressed- The jean jacket was graffiti art’s first canvas. B boys on the street, Brooklyn circa 1983
Photograph by Jamel Shabazz

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Bronx, Brooklyn, Crave, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography

The Way We Wore: Black Style Then

Posted on June 19, 2015

1978, Newark, New Jersey. Douglas Says.

Style is a statement of individuality, of identity, and of pride. Style is the great art of living manifest by our desire to beautify, to adorn, and to express a great inner being in tangible form. Style most readily finds itself expressed through fashion, hair, and makeup, though it is also evident in the very act of documenting one’s self. To have style is to give unto the world, to share it not only in the present tense but to capture it for future generations to enjoy.

In The Way We Wore: Black Style Then (Glitterati Incorporated), Michael McCollom chronicles African-Americans fashion from the 1940s through today. Featuring snapshots of over 150 black men and women’s most unforgettable “style moments”, The Way We Wore includes personal photographs taken from the author’s own family and circle of friends, a circle of 100 fashion insiders, outsiders, and beautiful people that includes Oprah Winfrey, James Baldwin, Carmen de Lavallade, Iman, Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks, Tracy Reese, Patrick Kelly, Kimora Lee, Bobby Short, Bethann Hardison, Tookie Smith, and Portia LaBeija, among others.

The late, great Geoffrey Holder eloquently observes in the book’s foreword, “One should not enter a room and expect ambiance; one should enter a room and become it. Those that grace the pages of The Way We Wore took that concept and ran with it. Through the reader will witness the evolution—and, in some cases, the faux pas—of fashion and design, it is in the personal flair that an individual bestows to each outfit that creates the look…. Like a yearbook, you will come back to this work again and again. Though you may not know the people personally, you will recognize them. Michael has carefully chosen pictures and people that exhibit the historical framework of African-American influence on fashion, design, and culture.”

Read the Full Story at CRAVE ONLINE

1978, Newark, New Jersey. Linwood Allen, Designer.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Salut ! NYC, 1981 Nominated for Webby Award

Posted on April 8, 2015

SAMO IS DEAD, New York, NY, 1981. Photograph by Robert Herman

We are thrilled to announce that NYC, 1981 has been nominated for a Webby Award in the category of Website: Blog – Cultural, alongside the likes of Vanity Fair, The New York Times, Pitchfork, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

NYC, 1981 is a culture website inspired by the film “A Most Violent Year,” and a TWBE x A24 production. For the site, I had the great privilege of interviewing Charlie Ahearn, John Ahearn, Barry Blinderman, Joyce Chasan, Joe Conzo, Jane Dickson, Ricky Flores, Arlene Gottfried, Robert Herman, Douglas Kirkland, Joe Lewis, Christopher Makos, Toby Old, Clayton Patterson, and Jamel Shabazz. You can check out these interviews and more at NYC, 1981

We would like to encourage you to vote, and to spread the word, so that this great, independent site dedicated to New York City culture, politics, and art in 1981 will receive the recognition it deserves.

Vote HERE.

Categories: 1980s, Art, Books, Bronx, Brooklyn, Fashion, Graffiti, Manhattan, Music, Painting, Photography

Richard Verdi: New York Punk

Posted on May 2, 2014

Back in the 1970s when New York teetered on the verge of bankruptcy, a new world was being born, a world of Do It Yourself (cause if it ain’t you, it might never be). It was during this time that Richard Verdi went out every night going with his friends to catch live music shows at CBGB’s. Verdi has just released his book, New York Punk, self-published, because that’s what D.I.Y. means. New York Punk is a charming number, like the paperback photography books of the 70s, the collections of printed matter done in small editions and halftone printing. Paper and ink, bound in hand, pages turning one after another, a story of how we lived then.

Verdi’s photographs are from a time before video killed the radio star, from a time before any of these artists were on the radio, when they were still at the clubs doing shows for the crowds. Style is everything, and it is here in high contrast black and white. It is where it all began, an aesthetic of destruction distinctly American. New Yorker to be exact. This is downtown when it was underground and more people were none the wiser to what would come next.

Read the Full Story at
L’Oeil de la Photographie

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Joe Maloney: New Jersey, c. 1979

Posted on July 2, 2013

Joe Maloney, “Blue Fence, Asbury Park, New Jersey,” 1980

Joe Maloney, Seaside Heights, New Jersey, 1980

Joe Maloney is that guy, the one who works on two levels at the same time. He takes what we know, what we see, our cultural vernacular, and translates it through the lens of the camera so that he speaks in all languages without ever saying a word. It is seen, it is felt, it is… understood.

And yet, there is more, always more.

“Maloney was a member of the stable of legendary photographers at LIGHT, the preeminent New York gallery of contemporary photography which included many notable photographers whose work in color helped revolutionize the acceptance of the medium. Maloney, along with Stephen Shore, Mitch Epstein, Carl Toth and others helped set the stage for today’s generation of photographers whose use of color is automatic and not necessarily a conscious choice.”

So begins the text for Maloney’s exhibition of previously-unseen work now showing at Rick Wester Fine Art, New York, through August 16.

The text continues, “At a time when polychromatic images were radical and their validity fought over, Maloney found the subject matter closest to him, suburbia, the receding rural landscape and the cultural oddities that America had created of them bathed in sunlight of enormous emotional range and conflict. Late, electric, raking sun cut swathes of scenery into patterns sewn together by streets and parks populated by pleasure seekers, poseurs, and other characters caught up in what Bruce Springsteen sang as ‘this runaway American Dream” Maloney’s exploration of the Jersey Shore and in particular Asbury Park is fueled by the urge to discover something immediate, concrete and candid within the artifice of the resort town culture.”

Through Maloney’s lens, we see a world we know, a world in which we once lived, as children and adults on summer break. His photographs are at once nostalgic, and something more; they embrace the enthnography of the Jersey Shore without trying too hard. There is no tongue planted in cheek, there is no pedestal to be placed upon or knocked down a peg. There is no self-consciousness, no self-referential narcissism. There is simply a time and a place and the people who lived it, just as they live it today.

For more information please check out
Joe Maloney :: Asbury Park & the Jersey Shore, c. 1979

Joe Maloney, Two Girls, Seaside Heights, New Jersey, 1980

Categories: 1970s, Art, Fashion, Photography

Shirt Kings: Pioneers of Hip Hop Fashion

Posted on June 5, 2013

Music, art, fashion, style. For a glorious moment these things all combined in an ethos of Do It Yourself. In New York City during the 1970s and 80s, the culture of Hip Hop first began to assert itself as DJs, MCs, b-boys and b-girls, created a way of rocking unlike anything the world had seen before. At the same time, graffiti had taken hold, a kind of public art so powerful and profound it became the most epic form of writing on the wall. But as the police began to crack down, buffing the trains and issuing more than desk appearance tickets to its practitioners, graffiti found new ways to express itself.

Airbrush was just the thing to allows for a smooth transition to a new kind of surface. Customized jackets, jeans, sweatshirts, and t-shirts, became the means to express yourself. It was the Shirt Kings who took this form to its highest heights, as Phade (Edwin Sacasa), Nike, and Kasheme (Rafael Avery) joined together to form the Shirt Kings, the first black clothing line straight from the streets. They went on to produce a style of clothing so iconic that it has become synonymous with the place and the time from which it spring, a zeitgeist in the making as no one could have ever predicted, not even the artists themselves.

Shirt Kings: Pioneers of Hip Hop Fashion by Edwin PHADE Sacasa and Alan KET (Dokument Press) is a vibrant photo album of their greatest hits. Phade began his graff career while a student at Art & Design, during the years when its student body included Daze, Doze Green, Lady Pink, Lil Seen, and Marc Jacobs. Outside of school, Phade was bombing the trains, living the life as it was meant to be lived.

As he recalls, “So what’s so special about the 80s? For me it was the graffiti cars swirling through New York City like canvases painted for the world to see. It was watching school comrades transform into the next generation of graffiti artists and joining the Rock Steady Crew. Getting calls to mentor and give out the wisdom I got from Kase 2 and Butch 2. Going to clubs like Harlem World on 116^th Street and Lenox Avenue, Broadway International, T-Connection in the Bronx, Disco Fever, P.A.L. 183^rd, Galaxy, Skate Fever, Skate-City in Brooklyn, Roseland USA and Empire Skating Rink in Brooklyn. Watching the Old Gold Crew from Brownsville, Brooklyn, fighting with their hand skills. Hearing the Supreme Team Show on the radio. Mr. Magic and Eddie Cheeba late night on the radio. Listening to hip hop with a hanger for an antenna to get some bootleg station.”

With an education like this, Phade’s evolution as an artist was natural. In 1984, he Sound 7 taught him how to airbrush, and once he acquired this skill, he began producing work, selling “Money Making New Yorker” t-shirts on the corner of 125 and Lenox Avenue. He went on to partner with Kasheme and Nike to form the Shirt Kings and launched their business in the Jamaica Coliseum in June 1986.

Jam Master Jay, a personal friend of Kasheme, came through to the opening with a crew of at least fifty. Back in the days, as hot as Hip Hop was, it was still of the people and it was grounded in the art form itself; it has not yet gone pop, had not yet hit the suburbs, or transformed into an international powerhouse. Back in the 80s, Hip Hop had an edge and it was a language spoken in the art, the dance, the music, and the lyrics.

As Alan Ket notes in his introduction, “The Shirt Kings style of airbrush design became a fashion statement made popular by the hottest rappers and deejays of the day. It seemed like overnight that their designs were everywhere from Just Ice’s record to the Audio Two’s popular album to the stage of the Latin Quarters where all the best emcees were performing weekly. As the Shirt Kings’ business took off their style was copied across the Northeast and they themselves expanded and covered Miami. Pretty soon they had deals with rappers and singers alike to provide the wardrobe designs for tours and music videos.”

Shirt Kings: Pioneers of Hip Hop Fashion takes us back to this era like nothing else ever could, the casual portraits and snapshots of the people, the art, the love of style, originality, and glamour itself. The book features portrait after portrait of some of the era’s greatest stars, along with personal quotes that remind us just how deep the Shirt Kings legacy goes. As Nas notes, “It wasn’t just rap celebrities, it was like street celebrities that had them on.” And that makes all the difference to the culture as it began to transform.

There is a joie de vivre that appears on every page, that same joy that came from Hip Hop as it made its way off the block and before the world stage. The Shirt Kings take us back to a time when Hip Hop was on the cusp, embodying the spirit of greatness itself, from one work of art to the next.

Tasja from South Side Jamaica, Queens, a proud customer wearing Dapper Dan and Shirt Kings, 1986, from ‘Shirt Kings: Pioneers of Hip Hop Fashion’ by Edwin PHADE Sacasa and Alan KET

Categories: 1980s, Art, Books, Bronx, Brooklyn, Fashion, Graffiti, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Martin Guggisberg: MISS

Posted on May 30, 2013

Shiny. Glossy. Fresh. Young. Competition to see who wins. The prize? A title, a crown, finishing big in a pageant of hopefuls, teenage girls who traipse about in evening gowns, bikinis, full hair and make up, heels and the commitment to win. Photographer Martin Guggisberg captures the all the awkwardness, the surreal and the banal, the tarnished innocence and the plastic naïveté, the thrill of exhibitionism, adoring the attention, the chance to shine bright in the spotlight as they walk across the stage. It takes a certain kind of Miss to win titles like these: Miss Bikini. Miss Wildwest. Miss Asia. Miss Do-It-Yourself. Miss Handicap. Miss Italy Switzerland. Miss Polefitness. Miss Pit Stop Day.

Guggisberg’s photographs are glossy double page spreads, recalling nothing so much as the glossy pages of a men’s magazine. The difference is that here they are unposed, unaware of the camera, going about the daily business of the pageant circuit, their bodies, faces, hair an industry unto themselves. This is the business of self-exploitation, of a kind of beauty that is not very pretty but it is not without its appeal. Gone is the grace of the feminine and in its place is the crass vulgarity of mass appeal. It is a kind of appearance, a physical poise, a way of beholding oneself that makes the pageant contender a spectacle to behold.

Presence, appearance, the ability to embody a feminine ideal, one that is both virgin and whore at the same time, to be seductive and alluring but unavailable at the same time. A tease, a tempt, a twirl, nothing wrong in that it is not indecent so much as in poor taste, like the original reality show contest, only this one is live and it happens just once a year. There is a tradition of this, of judging the fresh new picks, like the old school country fairs of yesterday when the prize pig was awarded the bright blue ribbon for having the sweetest flesh. In exchange for money and honors, these young women happily, and sometimes unhappily, compete for Best in Show.

It’s easy to be a hater. The photographs aren’t flattering. They’re not rude either, they are just terribly unglamorous. Nothing kills so much as familiarity. Once the mystery is gone the allure begins to fade and on women this young that’s a sad reality. Start early before the looks begin to ebb, and what will be there for these girls but a distant past. These are the glory days. That’s what makes Guggisberg’s photographs poignant. They do not mock or exalt, but rather show us those times the mask has been lowered.

The effect is one of vulnerability, which is in distinct contrast to the large format, glossy pages that turn effortlessly. Yet stop on any image and something changes, no longer are these just quiet moments but a kinf od desperation is felt. Consider the woman whose arm is missing, the Cerrulean blue of her gown quietly falling over her shoulder, her eyes wide set with worry, concern, her lower lip bitten with a visible tension that strains through her seams. It is all or nothing and she wants it bad. What will happen? Turn the page.

Bikinis. Yellow. Red. Blue. Puple. Black and White. Shiny stilettos, silver, gold, white patent leather. Strippers without the implants or the drug habit. Aligned backstage before the parade begins. Casual calm but only just so. As one girl looks off into the distance, her eyes focused on a thought that has her concerned. Turn the page.

Now we see them from the back. The girl in purple has a Chinese tattoo running down her back. She’s also pulling at the bottom of her bathing suit, while a girl in red is content to let it ride all the way up. There are barely any faces, but those that are shown are edgy with anticipation. We’re headed up the stairs on to the stage. This is what it all comes down to, isn’t it?

We don’t know, we won’t know, who will win. It doesn’t matter to anyone, really, except the girls in the photographs. And they are without name, the photographs without caption. Because it is not who they are that drives this industry but our desire to tell stories about them to ourselves.

Categories: Art, Books, Fashion, Photography, Women

Just Chaos! Curated by Roberta Bayley

Posted on May 16, 2013

Marcia Resnick, Johnny Thunders, 1972

Books and photographs. Photographs and books. The historical record reflects the times as they were lived by those who were there. And here we are, some four decades later, reflecting on punk as it first came up on the streets of New York, along the Bowery, at CBGBs, a mélange of artists, performers, and personalities making for great photography, for stories that are shared and collected, for memories rediscovered and truths being told. For those who were there, and those who missed it, Just Chaos! takes us back to a time and a place where you damn sure better do it yourself, cause if you don’t ain’t no one else.

In the windows and intimate niches of BookMarc, New York, now through May 23, Roberta Bayley has installed selections from 13 photographers of the era:, many which have not been seen before this exhibition. Featuring the work of Bayley, Janette Beckman, Stephanie Chernikowski, Lee Black Childers, Danny Fields, Godlis, Julia Gorton, Bobby Grossman, Bob Gruen, Laura Levine, Eileen Polk, Marcia Resnick, Chris Stein, and Joe Stevens, the photographs featured here are curated with an eye towards style, inspired by the energy of the era as it manifested in the world at that time. “It’s all based in poverty,” Bayley reflects. Everything was D.I.Y., do it yourself.

Fashion, music, style, photography—all of it came as an expression of the truth: after the hippie movement sparked, it became mainstream and lost its edge. Punk came out of that void, all claws and fangs and guitar strings, spikes and torn clothes. It was street, strung out and sexy. It was the artist as anti-hero, a Romantic poem at the end of the second millennium AD. It was about the absolutes of individualism, of speaking your own voice and saying F the system.

But the only constant in life is change, and in one’s own lifetime there are seismic shifts. And now it is that we look to books and photographs to remind us of how it used to be so that we may reflect and consider how the only constant is change. Godlis reflects, “Everyone went down to CBGBs. Everyone would come up with new ideas and you could connect with them. We put flyers on lampposts. That was the Internet of the day. You did not wait for something to be done by someone else.”

Making something out of nothing is what New York has been about, being an original, being authentic, having something no one else could touch. The depths to which Richard Hell, Chrissie Hynde, Debbie Harry, the Ramones, the Heartbreakers, the Dead Boys, and so many others brought to their music was matched by the eye of the photographers whose energy enhanced their own. A dialogue was born, a conversation of photographs, emblems, images, icons. It was a new way of looking at the world, a freedom that came from commitment to one’s artistry.

Marcia Resnick explains, “Punks express themselves with youthful aplomb, audacity and honesty. They realize their creative drives without reservation, whether they are making music or outfitting themselves in unique attire. They do things to the best of their abilities without consideration for polish or acceptance.” Consider her photograph of Johnny Thunders: “He covered his face with a kerchief, like the Lone Ranger. He wore a syringe, like a feather, in his hat. He is the incarnation of audacity.”

And it was this audacity that first sailed across the seas, back to the UK, influencing their culture in notorious ways. As Janette Beckman notes, “Punk brought an anti-establishment raw freshness to music, art and style and politics. It was about change, the idea that people should question authority and ‘do it for themselves’. At that time the economy in the UK was terrible, the three day work week, no jobs, no future, British class system, led people to rebel against the way things were and had always been. Punk was an attitude and a life style, that changed everything in the UK.”

Punk has power because it is rooted in the commitment of the individual. Taking on its ethos requires one to maintain a level of personal integrity uncompromised by expectation of objection. As Bobby Grossman recalls, “My photos were synonymous with PUNK.I abandoned a career in painting and Illustration (BFA Rhode Island School of Design) and after a few visits to CBGB to see the first Talking Head shows. I picked up a camera and began to document my visits every night. I had basic photography skills and I found that a Konica point and shoot camera was the simplest and easiest way to go. I often shot from the hip so some of my images included the graffiti on the ceiling while missing most of the composition or maybe just getting a portion of it. I was very in the moment. Many or most No Wave and PUNK musicians were novices to their instruments and I guess you could say the same about me and my camera.”

Punk is the great equalizer. Take it and make it yours. You don’t need money. You don’t need hype. Do It Yourself. Take photographs. Make books. Hang shows. Photography offers a path into the past that makes it come alive in every glance. The cumulative effect of Just Chaos! is breathtaking. It is the awareness that this is it, this is the tipping point in history. We are back on Bleecker Street. The time is not the same, but the time is always now to be making moves.

Janette Beckman, Punks, Worlds End, London 1978

Categories: 1970s, Art, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Harry Allen: The Media Assassin

Posted on March 18, 2013

Run-DMC and Doctor Dre, outside of WBAU/90.3 FM, in the Adelphi University Center, Garden City NY, July 1983, Photograph © Harry Allen

Pebblee-Poo at Home, Photograph © Harry Allen

T La Rock, Benjamin Franklin H.S., South Bronx, Photograph © Harry Allen

Harry Allen is the Media Assassin. Be it print, radio or digital; written or spoken word; or in the medium of photography Allen ihas had a hand in hip-hop culture dating back to 1982, when he first met Carlton “Chuck D” Ridenhour in 1982, when the two took an animation class at Adelphi University. Ridenhour, then a member of the Hip Hop group Sepctrum City introduced Allen Flavor Flav and Terminator X (who, along with Chuck D, would form the core of Public Enemy), Spectrum City founders Hank and Keith Shocklee (who, along with Chuck D and Eric “Vietnam” Sadler , would form PE’s legendary production team, The Bomb Squad ), future Def Jam President Bill Stephney, and Andre “Doctor Dre” Brown, best known for later co-hosting Yo! MTV Raps.

It was during this time that Allen began his work in photography, capturing the local scene and visiting New York City stars, before he began writing professionally in 1987. Allen’s first published article was one of the first pieces to illuminate the political ideology behind Public Enemy. After a 1989 Washington Times interview with Professor Griff brought accusations of anti-Semitism against PE, Allen began identifying himself as a “hip hop activist and media assassin”, becoming the group’s publicist as “director of Enemy relations.”

An early proponent of the Internet, creating an online presence for PE in 1991, Allen was recently named “social media curator” by Fast Company recently named Allen a “social media curator” and one of “11 People Who Could Make Your Twitter Experience More Interesting.” Currently hosting NONFICTION, a Friday afternoon radio show on WBAI-NY/99.5 FM (the flagship of the non-commercial Pacifica radio network), Allen has always had a great affinity for photography. It’s no small feat to host a radio show with photographers as your guests, and successfully convey the nature of their work through ideas, rather than images. But time and again Allen does this, and it is a testament to his innate ability to understand the various forms in which reportage takes place. I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak with Harry Allen about his career in the media, and spotlight his work as a photographer.

Your title “Media Assassin” is incredibly powerful. I have lots of questions about this… How did you come to this idea early in your career? How has it developed over the course of time? Has that changed as you have become a part of the media? And, ultimately, what is your responsibility to your listeners and readers?

Harry Allen: I created the title, Media Assassin, as a way of denoting a certain kind of aggression and intensity in my work. I see it as emblematic of the language employed by great thinkers I admire: Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass, David Walker, and others. Over time, the title has become better known, but I can’t say that my objectives for my work have changed in this regard. Ultimately, I consider my responsibility to not “pull punches,” and to communicate in a way that conforms with my operative motto: Educate and excite, inform and infuriate.

You’ve always taken a very intellectual and political approach to Hip Hop, something that existed back in the days, but seems to have vanished as money become an object of desire. What is the impetus to maintain your integrity as the culture evolves in another direction?

I can answer this question two related ways:

1) I think my approach to hip-hop is a reflection of who I am, and what I value. I am very much in touch with my own thoughts, and I am confident about them. As such, “maintaining” the approach you describe is merely a matter of doing what comes naturally to me. See this April 2010 interview Dr. Craig Werner and I did with Wisconsin Public Radio

2) I was brought up in, and continue to practice, Seventh-day Adventism as a spiritual system. SDAism has many values, but I think a core one is the idea that God-led people must commit to correct behavior, and not waver. Biblical characters who did this made a strong impression on me, early on, and continue to do so.

But even more, a kind of relentlessness about one’s position, if one believes it to be right and honorable, has become an aspect of my character. Growing up, I did not learn that “money” had an unlimited value. I learned that correct behavior was of higher value than money, and that this notion had a Godly basis. So, practicing correct ideas, and holding to correct standards, as I understand them—a relative kind of inflexibility about this—may be part of what you detect.

I love that you were taking photographs all along! It’s like discovering your house has another room you didn’t even know about. Where did your desire to photograph come from? Who are your inspirations and influences ? How does your visual work play into your mission? How did your subjects relate to you wielding a camera? And what has surprised you most about the public’s reception to your work when Bill Adler exhibited your collection, Part of the Permanent Record: Photos From the Previous Century?

I’ve always enjoyed taking pictures, from the days of dropping B&W 126 cartridges into the back of a cheap camera we had in the house. It got turned up in high school, though, when I was loaned a Canon Canonet GIII-17 rangefinder for a project, and learned I dug the process of making slide shows.

Around the time I left high school for college, I bought a Polaroid SX-70 Special Edition, and a Polaroid 600 SE. Later, I bought a used, match-needle Canon TX w/ a 50mm 1.8 lens and a Canon 577G “potato masher” automatic flash. It was with this basic rig that I shot the pictures you’ve noted.

My inspirations are anyone who has shot and printed a B&W image beautifully. I love the work of Arnold Newman, Henri-Cartier Bresson, Helmut Newton, Ansel Adams, and lots of others.

I think the connection between my photography and other work is that all are centered around the individual. That is, my favorite photography is portraiture. My favorite journalism is the profile, or the Q&A. The act of revealing a person, and their nuances, compels me, in all media.

The people of whom I tended to take pictures possessed big personalities, to begin. so, making images of them tended to be a straightforward task.

Part of the Permanent Record: Photos From the Previous Century was an immensely gratifying event. About 99% of the images we chose had never been printed before. I’d never seen them except on a contact sheet.

Though it was, sadly, Eyejammie Fine Art’s final photo show, getting the exhibit gave me a greater sense of my work and its value. I’d always thought that I had some photographic talent, and that there were people who’d like my work, but seeing people actually show up to look at my pictures was a big moment. Having people buy prints took it to another level.

Now, I’ve been taking some of those images around to colleges and universities, as part of a presentation titled Shooting the Enemy: My Life in Pictures with the People Who Became Public Enemy. See:

http://harryallen.info/?p=7317
http://harryallen.info/?p=7360

This has become an especially gratifying experience, as it gives me an opportunity not only to show the images, and to talk about them, but to discuss my ideas about hip-hop with interested audiences.

You’ve been in radio for nearly 30 years! I love Nonfiction on WBAI. Who have been some of your most memorable interviews? And who are your dream interview subjects?

I’ve been writing professionally since June 1987, and broadcasting since June 2003 on my Friday, 2 pm show, NONFICTION.

I’ve interviewed everyone from Harvard African and African American Studies head Dr. Henry Louis Gates to Black Panther Party activist Kathleen Cleaver; director David Cronenberg to dance music diva Ultra Naté.

I don’t have a favorite interview, or dream interviewee, but I most value those interviews where I learn something new and valuable that I didn’t know; where the subject reveals something of themselves that they’ve not said before; or where I ask them a question they say is so original that it stops them in their tracks.

My business is cultivating conversations. It’s my passion, and it’s something, thank God, I do well. The next part of my life is bringing together my God-given abilities in a way that drives a bigger, deeper, more profound conversation about human culture. That is what I’m onto now and next.

Grandmaster Flash On-Stage at the Ritz, NYC, Photograph © Harry Allen

Categories: 1980s, Art, Fashion, Music, Photography

Jim Naughten – Conflict and Costume: The Herero Tribe of Namibia

Posted on March 13, 2013

Herero Woman in Patchwork Dress (2012) ©Jim Naughten/courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

Costume. How we define ourselves when we stand upon the world’s stage and read from the scripts we draft. In donning an ensemble, we assume a posture, an attitude, an aesthetic that we accept as how we see ourselves, and how we wish to be seen. Costume can shape identity the way the corset shapes a woman’s waist. It can take hold and command a sense of respect, of pride, and of purpose, and in this way it can become the most subversive thing on earth.

This is evidenced in Jim Naughten’s new series of photographs collected in Conflict and Costume: The Herero Tribe of Namibia, both a book published by Merrell and an exhibition at Klompching Gallery, Brooklyn that opens March 14 and runs through May 4. In Naughten’s photographs, the Herero stand tall against a blue sky, radiant like flowers blooming across the desert floor. They are garbed in fine style, a look the world has never seen, a post-colonial aesthetic that commands authority as it illustrates the defiant spirit of the Herero peoples.

The Herero arrived in Namibia in the eighteenth century, bringing with them horses, ox-drawn wagons, guns, and Christianity. As Lutz Marten writes in the introduction to Conflict and Costume, “They also brought new styles of clothing, and it was during these early days of contact with the wider world that the Herero were first introduced to the military uniforms and Victorian-style dress.” As their economy developed, the Herero took to sartorial expression of their success.

In 1884, Namibia was annexed by the Germans to forestall British encroachment. The Germans, however, made for cruel rulers, with their brutally enforced notions of racial supremacy, alternately slaughtering or enslaving the populace. The Herero resistance led to a full-scale war from 1904-08. About 80% of the population was killed. In 1915, the German colonial army was defeated by South African forces, which then annexed the country until 1988. But it was the brutal war against the Germans that became central to the rebuilding of the Herero cultural identity.

Shortly after the end of World War I, the Herero created the Otruppe, a symbolic, rather than actual army. From the uniforms of the killed or departed Germans, a regiment was born, and women joined in creating grand dame gowns that befit the most regal ladies in the world. The Herero have created a highly detailed and symbolic form of costuming for the regiments, which are donned at ceremonies and festivals to commemorate the past take on a level of radical chic. “To the victor go spoils,” it has been said. To assume the costume of the enemy in memory of those who gave their life is nothing short of a kind of victory that few could ever imagine.

As Naughten observes, “Namibia is an extraordinary country, and perhaps most interesting to me is the stories that we don’t know, the ones that have been lost or fragmented in aural tradition. There’s very little literature from the last hundred years or so, but there’s a tangible sense of history in the ghost towns, colonial architecture, cave paintings, and the landscape that feels otherworldly and timeless.

“When I look at the dresses and costumes I see a direct connection with this period with an almost a ghostly imprint of the German settlers. I see my images as both a study of and a celebration of the costume, and not as a formal documentary on Herero culture, and I the paradoxical nature of the story is one of the most interesting aspects. Why would the Herero adopt the cloths of the very people who cost them so dearly?

“I see the clothes as symbolic of survival and strength, but particularly of a kind of defiance. In that sense, they are heroic. The taking and wearing of their enemies clothing is considered a way of absorbing and diminishing their power. They march and drill after the German fashion of the period, and ride horseback with extraordinary skill (horses were introduced by the settlers). To me the Herero are undiminished and have an extraordinary grace and presence.”

Naughten’s portraits are as majestic as the people he photographs, imparting a feeling of beauty and power that many in the West rarely consider twhen they think of Africa today. Naughten’s photographs of the Herero show us what victory truly means, and how it is that every day we walk this earth, we honor those who came before us, embracing the good, the bad, and the ugly on mankind and transforming it into a symbol of cultural and personal pride.

First Published in L’Oeil de la Photographie
March 13, 2013

Herero Man with Cow's Head (2012) ©Jim Naughten/courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

Herero Woman in Orange Dress (2012) ©Jim Naughten/courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography