Posts from the “Huck” Category

Mike Abrahams: Toxteth 1979-1982

Posted on January 22, 2021

*Mike Abrahams. Young men on Granby Street, Toxteth. Liverpool 8. 1982*

The Toxteth section of Liverpool is the oldest Black community in England, dating back to the American Revolution of 1776. Over the centuries, it has been home to a bustling mix of West Indian, African, Chinese, Irish, and Welsh immigrants.

But that didn’t stop racism from infiltrating the area: after World War I, white Britons blamed Black people for unemployment and housing insecurity. Their rage erupted into riots in 1919, when thousands ran amok for days. Their rampage resulted in the destruction of Black-owned properties and the death of 24-year-old Bermudan Charles Wootton, who was chased into the River Mersey by a mob, as police looked on. Police officers listed drowning as the cause of the Bermudian’s death; no one was held accountable.

The underlying bigotry continued to fester, creating tensions that resulted in a Black-led rebellion on July 3, 1981. A large crowd had gathered after word got out that an unidentified young Black man had been arrested and placed in the back of a police van.

Among those in attendance was Leroy Cooper, a 21-year-old photography student, who was violently arrested in front of the crowd, sparking nine days of civil unrest that resulted in the death of a disabled man, David Moore, 500 arrests, and the destruction of 70 buildings. The subsequent Scarman Report, which focused largely on the Brixton uprising of the same year, acknowledged that systemic issues facing Black communities in the UK were the root cause of the protests.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Mike Abrahams. Protesting against the police racist and oppressive tactics in Toxteth during the riots of 1981*

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

Women of the African Diaspora: Identity, Place, Migration, Immigration

Posted on January 20, 2021

Growing up with strong female figures, photographer and curatorAaron Turner learned from a young age to integrate women’s perspectives into his outlook on life. “As I got older, I understood the complexities and inequalities between men and women in multiple spaces,” he says. “I began to notice the gaps in photographic history narratives, mostly white and male. But in my mind, I said to myself, I know other narratives exist; what are they, and where are they?”

Just before he embarked on his MFA, Turner discovered the work ofDeborah Willis, Hank Willis Thomas, and Latoya Ruby Frazier. “I went my entire undergrad career not knowing about so many artists of colour, and I wondered how many other people did too,” he says.

In response, Turner launched the Center for Photographers of Color in 2014, creating a platform to go beyond the narrow confines of the historically exclusionary photography world. Turner’s ongoing dedication to the work of Black artists now finds focus inWomen of the African Diaspora: Identity, Place, Migration, Immigration, a new exhibition that brings together work from three artists to explore the complexities of female perspectives while preserving the kinship that they all share.

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Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Women

Larry Racioppo: Clinton Hill in the 1970s

Posted on January 19, 2021

*Four Boys, Myrtle Avenue, Larry Racioppo 1979*

When the United States economy reaches its breaking point, it historically turns to socialist policy to right the damage capitalism has wrought. In December 1973, President Richard Nixon signed the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) into federal law, enacting a nationwide service to train workers and provide them with jobs in public service.

In New York City, over 500 artists found work through the Cultural Council Foundation’s CETA Artists Project – the largest federal arts employment effort since the Works Progress Administration of 1933-42. Among the were photographers Meryl Meisler and Brooklyn native Larry Racioppo. On January 1, 1978, Racioppo started a job that paid him $10,000 a year – more than enough to live in New York City before it was gentrified.

“Being chosen for the CETA program was a big break emotionally and financially. I had taught photography at an alternative high school the year before but did not return in the Fall of 1977. I was scraping by with a little freelance work but was considering renewing my NYC taxi license,” Racioppo says.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Art, Brooklyn, Huck, Photography

Gilles Peterson: Cuba: Music and Revolution – Original Album Cover Art of Cuban Music: The Record Sleeve Designs of Revolutionary Cuba 1960–85

Posted on January 15, 2021

From rhumba to salsa, mambo to jazz, the music of Cuba has set the world aflame. Seamlessly fusing the melodies of Spanish guitar with complex African drum patterns to create an endless variety of intoxicating styles, it has become one of the most influential sounds of our times.

After the Cuban Revolution, the state launched its official record company, Egrem, which stands for ‘Empresa de Grabaciones y Ediciones Musicales’ (‘Enterprise of Recordings and Musical Editions’) in 1964. At that time, record sleeves were one of the only means for an artist to convey their image to the public en masse. The government understood the power of art, photography, and graphic design to spread its message around the globe.

“We must bear in mind that a new society is being established in Cuba and graphic art plays an important role in communicating the message to this society,” Cuban graphic designer Félix Beltrán is quoted as having said in 1969 in the new book, Cuba: Music and Revolution – Original Album Cover Art of Cuban Music: The Record Sleeve Designs of Revolutionary Cuba 1960–85 (Soul Jazz Records) edited by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker.

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

Bruce Davidson: Brooklyn Gang

Posted on January 8, 2021

The postwar boom in America cast a golden glow around the 1950s, the first decade when youth culture came into vogue. With the advent of television and Rock ‘n’ Roll, Hollywood quickly discovered a new archetype: the disaffected “rebel without a cause.” Co-opting working class aesthetics, Hollywood transformed the image of disenfranchised teens into anti-heroes for a new generation coming of age.

But the reality was much bleaker than a James Dean flick. Gangs provided what the community could not: a sense of family and belonging for those living on the margins. By the 1950s, juvenile delinquency was on the rise, and the mainstream media began targeting them as new class of criminals to be vilified.

After joining Magnum Photos in 1959, Bruce Davidson, then 25, read a newspaper story about white and Puerto Rican street gangs rumbling on the streets of New York City and decided to investigate.

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Categories: Art, Brooklyn, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography

Huck: Top Ten Photo Stories of 2020

Posted on December 23, 2020

In a challenging year, visual storytellers are still finding exciting ways to document – be it through innovative new projects, or old archive series now seeing the light of day. Here are the best ones we covered this year.

Liz Johnson Artur: Dusha

Growing up in Germany, Russian Ghanaian artist Liz Johnson Artur spent her summers in the former Soviet Union. But in 1986, she received an invitation to stay with a family friend in Brooklyn. Deep in Williamsburg, long before it was gentrified, Artur found herself in a Black community for the very first time.

“Up until then I hadn’t really travelled in any countries that had a Black population,” she says. “Coming to Brooklyn was something I didn’t expect, but I realiszd I could take pictures of people.”

Karen O’Sullivan: Somewhere Below 14th & East

By the ’80s, New York’s Lower East Side (LES) had been decimated by the ravages of drugs, “benign neglect” and landlord-sponsored arson. As squatters took over abandoned buildings, living side by side with black and Latinx residents, they immersed themselves in the sound of hardcore, punk, and hip hop exemplified by bands like The Clash, Beastie Boys, Bad Brains, Black Flag, the Misfits and Minor Threat.

The LES became the Mecca of all things anti-glamour and glitz, raging against the Reagan-fueled yuppification of Manhattan. As the centre of resistance from the coming onslaught of gentrification, the neighborhood welcomed outcasts into the mix, giving them an outlet for creativity and self-expression in an increasingly neoliberal city.

Sergio Purtell: Love’s Labour

In 1973, at the tender age of 18, Sergio Purtell fled his hometown of Santiago, Chile, for the United States. The decision came after General Augusto Pinochet and Admiral José Merino lead a coup d’état, killing the democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende. Once situated in his new home, Purtell began studying photography, going on to receive a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and an MFA from Yale.

“Photography had the ability to sustain time itself – it was to be discovered not constructed,” Purtell says. “One could use one’s intuition to drive one’s motivation. Suddenly the world started to make sense to me.”

Read the Full List at Huck

*Liz Johnson Artur, Josephine, Peckham, 1995.*

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Amani Willett: A Parallel Road

Posted on December 21, 2020

atural extension of Manifest Destiny, the mythic American road trip supposes freedom can be found on stolen land. Crafted by colonisers, the belief that one could simply jump in a car to escape the oppressive confines of society was a privilege granted to and moulded for the self-actualisation of, by and large, white men.

But those without their protected status have long warned of America’s vast network of highways and roads. In 1936, Victor Hugo Green, a Black travel writer hailing from Harlem, began publishing The Negro Motorist Green Book – a handbook showcasing stores, motels, and gas stations that welcomed Black travellers in New York City. An immediate success upon release, Green expanded coverage to include other US destinations in annual editions over the next 30 years.

“The Green Book is a testament to the courage, perseverance and unwillingness of Black Americans to be cast aside. But, it also told of the legitimate fears and threats that awaited them,” says Amani Willett, author of the new book A Parallel Road (Overlapse), a five-year project that examines the American road trip from a Black perspective.

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Categories: Art, Books, Huck, Photography

Alys Tomlinson: Lost Summer

Posted on December 11, 2020

A century ago, Gertrude Stein coined the term “lost generation”, referring to the innocence stolen by the shadow of World War I. It was this same generation which roared into the 1920s, chasing the flower of youth that had been mowed down before it had a chance to bloom.

As 2020 comes to a close, so many have experienced profound loss on every level of their lives. For Gen Z, who are just now coming of age, the pandemic has robbed them of the opportunity to debut their talents on the world stage. Schools have closed, jobs disappeared, and social outings are fraught with danger at every turn.

British photographer Alys Tomlinson recognizes the toll the pandemic has been taking on the youth. “Exams cancelled, no chance to say goodbye to friends, end of year proms shelved and nothing to mark this significant stage of growing up and moving into adulthood,” she reflects.

As her commissioned work dried up amid the pandemic, Tomlinson decided to make black and white portraits of teens in her diverse North London neighborhood. From June through August 2020, she photographed some 44 teens using a 5×4 camera for a series of portraits collected in Lost Summer – a new book and exhibition.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Books, Huck, Photography

Janette Beckman: El Hoyo Maravilla

Posted on December 2, 2020

While staying at the Beverly Hills bungalow of Go-Gos manager Ginger Canzoneri during the summer of 1983, British photographer Janette Beckman read a story in LA Weekly about a gang war happening on the streets of East Los Angeles.

“The article described this culture going on half an hour drive from where I was staying,” says Beckman, who was shooting music and underground cultures for Melody Maker and The Face. “I needed to go and check it out. It described them, what they wore and I was like, ‘Where are the photos?’”

Beckman got in touch with the journalist and he brought her out to Maravilla Park, home to El Hoyo Maravilla – a Mexican-American gang that got its start in 1935. “People told me it was a dangerous neighbourhood but I just went. I am really a believer that people are basically good,” Beckman says.

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Categories: 1980s, Art, Huck, Photography

Alan Lodge: Stonehenge

Posted on November 26, 2020

The Free Festival Movement of the 1970s took the UK by storm, offering a mélange of music, arts, and cultural activities at no cost. Beginning with Woodstock in 1969, the possibility of creating a mini utopia became a dream come true – that was until they became too popular, and the state got involved.

“’Free Festivals’ developed from people being fed up with the exploitation, rules, squalor and overall rip-off that so many events had become. They discovered something… a powerful vision,” says British photographer Alan Lodge, author of the new book Stonehenge (Café Royal Books).

“People lived together: a community sharing possessions, listening to great music, making do, living with the environment, consuming their needs and little else,” Lodge says. “Life on the road in an old £300 1960s bus, truck or trailer seemed like a bloody good option, weighed against the prospect of life on the dole in some grotty city under the Tory Government.”

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

Tom Wood: 101 Pictures

Posted on November 24, 2020

*Tom Wood. ‘Anyone got any hairspray’ 1983.*

Hailing from County Mayo, Ireland, Tom Wood fell in love with photography as a young man when he began visiting a local charity shop filled with glossy picture magazines, abandoned family albums, and vintage postcards from the turn of the century, which he purchased for a penny apiece.

He never thought of making photographs until he was an art student at Leicester Polytechnic in the mid-1970s. “After I shot a few rolls at school, I saw the same camera in a chemist shop, a Rolleicord, and bought that,” Wood says.

“I suddenly felt I could take pictures and it was dead easy. When I left college, all I wanted to do was make underground avant-garde films but 16-millimetre film was really expensive, so I thought I would just do photography for a little while.”

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*Tom Wood. Fashion sisters (sunglasses and platforms), 1973.*

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