Posts from the “Huck” Category

Larry Racioppo: Coney Island Baby

Posted on October 29, 2021

*Larry Racioppo. Palm Reading sign and the Thunderbolt rollercoaster, 1978.*

With its beach, boardwalk, and amusement park, Coney Island has long been the perfect escape from the stress of everyday life. South Brooklyn native Larry Racioppo and his extended family reveled in the pleasures of “America’s Playground” during his youth and teen years.

In the late 1960s, Racioppo enrolled in VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) and traveled to rural California, where he served two and a half years. He returned home in November 1970, with the dream of becoming a photographer.

In early 1971, Racioppo and a friend drove out to Coney Island to revisit his childhood stomping grounds — only to discover “Electric Eden” was on the brink of collapse. The once bustling boardwalk empire had become a ghost town. Abandoned buildings, burned out lots, neglect, disrepair, and white supremacist graffiti had brought seaside paradise to a standstill.

“Seeing the physical decline in my neighborhood and the city in general saddened me,” says Racioppo. “When I went to Coney Island I was struck by its emptiness. I saw that some attractions like the Tilyou Theater were closed not for the winter but for good.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Larry Racioppo. Young Boy in the Arcade, 1979.*

*Larry Racioppo. Stauch’s Baths with WARRIORS graffiti, 1979.*

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

Helen Levitt: In the Street

Posted on October 21, 2021

*Helen Levitt. New York, 1940 © Film Documents LLC Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne*

Hailing from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Helen Levitt (1913–2009) was a New York original. The daughter of Russian Jewish émigrés, Levitt rose to become one the greatest street photographers of the twentieth century.

“In a genre dominated by men at the time, Levitt created an outstanding body of work that spans more than six decades and encompasses images, films and books,” says Anna Dannemann, Senior Curator at The Photographers’ Gallery, who collaborated with curator Walter Moser and the Albertina Museum in Vienna, on the new exhibition, Helen Levitt: In the Street.

The exhibition, along with the new book Helen Levitt, offer a look at street life in working class communities around New York, which she began photographing in 1936 after meeting Henri Cartier-Bresson. Drawn to the spectacle of everyday life, Levitt embraced the passion and pathos of the community — a time when kids transformed the streets into their playground.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Helen Levitt. New York, 1982 © Film Documents LLC Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne*

Categories: Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Manhattan, Photography

Chas Gerretsen: Apocalypse Now: The Lost Photo Archive

Posted on October 20, 2021

*Chas Gerretsen. Pestering the Prisoner Children on top of bamboo cage. Martin Sheen as prisoner and Marlon Brando, Kurtz Compound.*

Growing up, Dutch photographer Chas Gerretsen noticed a glaring discrepancy between the stories his father told him about World War II and the Hollywood movies he saw. “To find answers about what war is really like, I had to go there and experience it,” he says.

In the 1960s, Gerretsen traveled to Vietnam, realized the benefit of having a press card, and secured a job a cameraman for UPI television news. A month later he went freelance, selling film stories to ABC. After finding a Browning 9mm pistol in the field after a firefight, Gerretsen traded it with UPI photographer Dana Stone for a Nikon F camera with a 105mm lens.

Gerretsen documented the war across Vietnam until 1969, when the fighting began to slow down. After returning home, people asked him what war was like. “When I told them what I’d seen and experienced, they would not believe me, because they’d read the newspaper or saw on television the propaganda of the day and that was the ‘truth’ for them.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Chas Gerretsen. Blowing Bubbles Amidst Enemy Kia. Behind the scenes: Kurtz Compound.*

*Chas Gerretsen. Mr. Clean with MG0 Machine Gun. Laurence Fishburne Do Lung Bridge.*

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Huck

Michael Kamber: URGENCY! Afghanistan

Posted on October 10, 2021

Young Afghan women cheer as they attend an election campaign rally for Afghan presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani in Kabul, April 1, 2014. The election is the third presidential poll since the fall of the Taliban. Photo by Paula Bronstein

October 7 marks the 20th anniversary of the United States invasion of Afghanistan. What began as “Operation Enduring Freedom”, an air strike against Al Qaeda and Taliban targets, has resulted in anything but.

The U.S. completed the withdrawal of its armed forces from Afghanistan on August 30, bringing to end the nation’s longest war of foreign land. Despite costing $2.313 trillion and 243,000 lives, the war proved yet another abject failure on the part of global empire — like Britain and the Soviet Union before it.

As the Taliban claimed victories across Afghanistan, the United States fled, leaving in its wake horrific scenes reminiscent of its departure from Vietnam. “The parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan are uncanny,” says American photographer Michael Kamber, founder of the Bronx Documentary Center.

Together with Cynthia Rivera, Kamber curated URGENCY! Afghanistan, a group exhibition bringing together the work of Victor J. Blue, Paula Bronstein, David Gilkey, Kiana Hayeri, Jim Huylebroek, Joao Silva, Marcus Yam, David Gilkey, killed in Afghanistan in 2016, and Tim Hetherington, killed in action in Libya in 2010.

Read the Full Story at Huck

German military convoy heads towards Kabul as a Northern Alliance guard from the checkpost waves them on after arriving at Bargram airport today, Jan. 11,02. They are in Afghanistan as part of the ISAF Peacekeeping force (International Security Assitance Force). Paula Bronstein/ Getty Images

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography

Mitch Epstein: In India

Posted on October 10, 2021

*Mitch Epstein. Ahmedabad, Gujarat, 1981.*

Coming of age in mid-century America, photographer Mitch Epstein was drawn to the mysticism and majesty of Indian culture. At Woodstock, he saw Ravi Shankar play sitar. In the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, he was transported half way around the globe. After seeing film clips of the Beatles visiting the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Epstein paid $35.00 to be initiated into Transcendental Meditation in Schenectady, New York.

But it wasn’t until he met filmmaker Mira Nair, his girlfriend and later wife, that Epstein made the journey for himself. Between 1978 and 1989, Epstein took eight extended trips to India. “I was thrust into an unfamiliar world and in a healthy way, it was disorienting. I had to learn a new cultural language and build on it along the way,” Epstein says.

“That was humbling because I grew up in an era of great privilege and opportunity and took it for granted to a certain extent. Putting myself into a world that wasn’t my own, compelled me to let go of some of my perspectives as an American.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Mitch Epstein. Arabian Sea, Bombay, Maharashtra, 1983.*

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

Pat Kane: Here is Where We Shall Stay

Posted on September 21, 2021

Pat Kane. A dog walks near the Catholic Church of the Holy Family in Łutsël K’é, Northwest Territories. The church was built near the present day settlement in the 1930s and moved to its current location at the tip of the peninsula – one of the tallest and most recognizable structures in the community.

An Algonquin Anishinaabe member of the Timiskaming First Nation, Canadian photographer Pat Kane was raised in a mixed-race home. “My mother was born on a reservation in Quebec and my father grew up in an Irish immigrant family,” he says.

“It wasn’t until I moved to Yellowknife [in the Northwest Territories] that I reconnected with my Indigenous side. The people here are so proud of their culture and their elders. That was a turning point for me.”

Photography provided Kane with a path to explore his identity by documenting the lives of the local Indigenous community, who are related to the Dene people of the Navajo Nation. Although Kane isn’t from their nation, his work over the past 20 years has established a bond of trust, understanding and respect.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Pat Kane. Instant photos of Terri Enzoe, Jaysen Michel and Jennifer Michel cover an archive photo of students and missionaries of the Chief Julius residential school in Teet’lit Zheh (Fort McPherson). Terri, Jaysen and Jennifer are land and water protectors from Łutsël K’é, working as part of the Ni Hat’ni Dene Guardians to preserve their homelands.

Pat Kane. Sage burns in a smudging bowl on Lila Fraser Erasmus’ dining room table. “We’re connected to the land, it is part of who we are as people, we are inseparable from it,” she says. “Our traditional medicines have strong healing powers – sage, spruce tips, chaga, fireweed, rat root – all of these plants we find on the land can help us with common sicknesses to serious diseases. If you take something from the land, it has to be picked with good intentions or else it won’t work. This is a very spiritual process for us.”

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Huck

Joe Conzo: The Elements

Posted on September 8, 2021

*Sal & Mickey Abbatiello, The Fever: 365 Nights of Hip Hop*

“Never in my wildest dreams as a kid from the South Bronx did I think that photography would bring me around the world,” says photographer, author, and activist Joe Conzo.

Coming of age in 1970s New York, Conzo’s worldview was shaped by his grandmother, Dr. Evelina Antonetty, who was fondly known as “The Hell Lady of the Bronx” for the work she did on behalf of the Puerto Rican community; his mother, community Lorraine Montenegro; and his father, Joe Conzo Sr., legendary bandleader Tito Puente’s personal manager and confidante.

Conzo witnessed the city’s infrastructure collapse under the weight of “benign neglect”, which denied basic government services to Black and brown communities across the United States, while landlord-sponsored arson reduced city blocks to rubble. He quickly learned the best way to create change was through collective action.

Read the Full Story a Huck

*Biggie Rolling Dice by Manuel Acevedo, 1994*

*Japanese Print by Manuel Acevedo, 1986*

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

John Benton Harris: Walking London 1965-1988

Posted on September 6, 2021

Hailing from the South Bronx, John Benton-Harris dreamed of being a pilot or a Method actor – then he discovered photography at age 14 and found his calling.

Now 81, the photographer traces his foundation to Edward Steichen’s seminal photography exhibition, Family of Man, which he saw at Museum of Modern Art in 1955. “It motivated me to focus on the human condition and to try to explain men to men, and to myself, at the same time,” he says.

In 1962, Benton-Harris “sort of gate-crashed” art director Alexey Brodovitch’s evening classes at the New York Institute of Photography. “He was criticizing everyone’s work,” Benton-Harris remembers. “He picked up my work and said, ‘He understood what this project was about.’ Then he looked up to say, ‘Who the hell are you?’”

Read the Story at Huck

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

Cey Adams: Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap

Posted on August 20, 2021

*Photograph by Jamel Shabazz. Four young men posing. This image was made on the Lower East Side of Manhattan at the famous Delancey Street & Orchard Street in 1980, a major shopping hub.*

“Like a kid that’s always dreaming about going to the NBA and then you get the call, I was dreaming of this project even before I knew I was going to work on it,” says artist Cey Adams, the founding creative director of Def Jam. Adams art directed the Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap, which is released on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings today (20 August 2021).

Tracing hip hop’s evolution from 1979 to 2013, the anthology brings together nine CDs with 129 tracks and a 300-page illustrated book published to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Featuring photographs by Janette Beckman, Charlie Ahearn, Anthony Barboza, Adrian Boot, Jamel Shabazz, and Glen E. Friedman, it offers a panoramic history of a culture born on the streets of the Bronx, that has since become a multi-billion dollar global phenomenon.

The anthology’s creators eschew the notion of a canon and instead envision the project as a foundation upon which to build. “I was on a call with LL Cool J and Chuck D, and we talked about not only making this book, but our journey as a people,” says Adams, who got his start as a graffiti writer in the 1970s.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*MC Sha-Rock, The Valley, NYC, June 1980, photo by Charlie Ahearn*

*Female Rappers, Class of ’88, 1988, photo by Janette Beckman*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Bronx, Brooklyn, Graffiti, Huck, Music, Photography

Syd Shelton: The Battle of Lewisham August 13th 1977

Posted on August 19, 2021

In the wake of global independence movements following World War II, the British Empire collapsed, the economy declined, and the extreme-right began to reassert itself on the national stage. During the late 1960s, the National Front (NF) rose to prominence by fanning the flames of racism and xenophobia to expand its power base.

The NF began targeting South London – home to Afro Caribbean and South Asian immigrants – to make their stand. They announced plans for an “Anti- Mugging March” from New Cross to Lewisham on August 13, 1977.

The march was precipitated by the arrest of young Black men and women known as the Lewisham 21. On May 30, the police raided their homes at dawn and charging them in connection with a series of muggings over a period of six months.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Huck, Photography

Douglas Corrance: New York 1970-1980s

Posted on August 17, 2021

By 1975, New York City teetered along the edge of bankruptcy, some $11 billion in debt. By October the situation had reached dire straits when President Gerald R. Ford refused a federal bailout, prompting the infamous Daily News front page: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD”.

The headline cost Ford re-election the following year, and haunted him for the rest of his life – a fitting turn of events for the man who dared to turn his back on the city that never sleeps. New Yorkers, on the other hand, had no choice but to soldier on.

Despite the crumbling infrastructure and economic decline further exacerbated by the Nixon White House of “benign neglect,” which systematically denied government services to Black and brown communities nationwide, and landlord-sponsored arson that reduced city blocks to rubble at record speed, New Yorkers proved to be resilient.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Huck, Manhattan, Photography