Posts from the “Manhattan” Category

Joseph Rodriguez: Mi Gente

Posted on November 10, 2015

Photo: Friday night at the Dominoe Social Club, 1987 © Joseph Rodriguez

Spanish Harlem. It’s an attitude, a mood, a way of living that is open, emotional, and warm. It is dominoes on the street as the sun sets as the music of Tito Puente and Eddie Palmieri wafts through the air from passing car stereos. It’s a place where open bottles and open fire hydrants are welcome in equal measure. Spanish Harlem is the city’s oldest barrio, dating back to the 1940s, when Puerto Ricans first established themselves in this little corner of upper eastside New York. Home to 120,000 people, half of which are Latino, the neighborhood has been forced to confront some of the city’s endemic problems of crime, drugs, AIDS, and chronic unemployment, many times as a result of systemic racism. Yet, like most true Yorkers, the people have a spirit and a will to survive.

For photographer Joseph Rodriguez, Spanish Harlem is sacred ground, a place he has returned to throughout his life to engage with the community. Born and raised in Brooklyn, Rodriguez first went uptown to visit his uncle who had a candy store in el barrio. Then, in 1984, as a student at the International Center of Photography, he was given the assignment of documenting the gentrification of East Harlem.

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Photo: Vietnam Veteran, 1988 © Joseph Rodriguez

Photo: Night scene, 1988 © Joseph Rodriguez

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

Lorraine O’Grady: Art Is…

Posted on November 2, 2015

Art Is… (Girlfriends Times Two), 1983/2009 Chromogenic color print 16 × 20 in. Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York

Quiet as kept, the annual African-American Day Parade attracts millions of people each year as it arches through the heart of Harlem, beginning at Central Park North, and marching up Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd to 136 Street. Founded in 1968 as an independent organization, the parade does not accept contributions. Instead, it was developed with the sprit of volunteerism and honoring the community. Featuring fire, police, and corrections departments, veterans associations, grand lodges, fraternities and sororities, step and drill teams, the African-American Day Parade is like Harlem Homecoming to the nation.

It was with in this spirit that conceptual artist Lorraine O’Grady stages a performance piece, “Art Is…”, which she entered her own float into the September 1983 African-American Day Parade with fifteen collaborators dressed in white. At the top of the float was a gilded gold frame, enormous and ornate, like the type you’d find in a museum around a masterpiece. As the float went up the boulevard, it framed everyone it passed, providing a moving snapshot of the treasures of life. The words “Art Is…” were emblazoned on he float’s skirt, offering an open-ended point of view. “Art is anything you can get away with,” said Andy Warhol.

“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home,” said Twyla Tharp. “Art is the most intense mode of individualism the world has ever known,” said Oscar Wilde. Art is any possibility you can imagine, even the idea that those two words could inspire countless ideas from all points of view. Just try it at home. Ask yourself to fill in the blanks. What is art to you?

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Art Is… (Girl Pointing), 1983/2009 Chromogenic color print 20 × 16 in. Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York

Art Is… (Line of Floats), 1983/2009 Chromogenic color print 16 × 20 in. Courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York

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

Thomas Roma: In the Vale of Cashmere

Posted on October 22, 2015

Photo: Thomas Roma, “Untitled (from the series In The Vale Of Cashmere), 2010. Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 in.

With In the Vale of Cashmere, Thomas Roma brings us into a little known Eden, one that has been quietly thriving for decades in the New York underground. The Vale of Cashmere is a secluded section of Prospect Park where black gay men cruise for sexual partners. Roma’s portraits of men set in an uncanny urban wooded landscape carry a history of New York and Brooklyn that predates and parallels the gay rights and civil rights movements.

A bard of Brooklyn, Roma is a poet-photographer who has been making profound images of the people of his native city since 1969. The founder and director of the photography program at Columbia, Roma works in a studio which he hand built in his Prospect Park South home, overseeing all aspects of production, from the development of the photographs to the design of his books.

In the Vale of Cashmere (powerHouse Books), Roma’s fourteenth monograph, will release to time with his inaugural exhibition at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York, from October 29–December 19, 2015. This is Roma’s first major New York exhibition of new photographs since his acclaimed solo exhibition Come Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art in 1996.

In the Vale of Cashmere was created as a memoriam to Carl Spinella, one of Roma’s closest friends, who died in Tom’s arms of AIDS in 1992. Roma first met Spinella in 1974; a year later they were roommates living on Dean Street in Brooklyn. Spinella had been instrumental in bringing Roma to his native Sicily in 1978 so that Roma could discover his ancestral roots. (These images were later published as the book Sicilian Passage.) Their bond was so close that Tom often would drive Spinella to the Vale of Cashmere and sometimes pick him up at the drop-off site, an act of faith in a time before cell phones, when who knows what could happen in the woods.

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Categories: Art, Books, Brooklyn, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

Jamel Shabazz: The Book That Changed My Life

Posted on October 14, 2015

In the Brooklyn home where Jamel Shabazz grew up, his father kept a signed copy of Leonard Freed’s book, Black in White America, on the coffee table. The book, which was first published in 1968, opens with a photograph of an African American solder standing in front of the Berlin Wall in 1962. Freed was struck by the fact that the solder was willing to defend America abroad while back in the United States, they were subject to systemic racism, oppression, and exploitation under Jim Crow laws.

Freed returned to the United States and began to document the everyday black life during the battle for civil rights in New York, Washington, D.C., and throughout the South. The result of his efforts was a landmark book that changed the life of photographer Jamel Shabazz when he was nine years old.

The original edition of the book did not have a photo. It just had the words: BLACK IN WHITE AMERICA. Shabazz remembers opening the book, and stopping at the first image of the solider taken in 1962. His father and two uncles were military, on of who was still stationed in Germany. From the very beginning, Freed’s work became a profound source of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding for Shabazz.

He recalls, “The book moved me to time travel outside of my community. It allowed m to escape the projects to North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi. I was seeing the places for the first time. After I looked at the pictures, I went back to read the book. There were so many words I didn’t understand. I saw ‘nigger’ for the first time in my life, so I went to a dictionary to look it up. I looked up ‘segregation’ and ‘integration.’ The first time I saw the word ‘rape’ was in this book. I didn’t understand what that word meant. It goes beyond the photos. I was learning horrible new words and it set my mind in a way that school wouldn’t. I was rereading the book, imaging myself at nine and ten years old, trying to decipher what is going on. I fell in love with photography and used the dictionary to unlock the mystery of this book.”

Photo: Leonard Freed

Photo: Jamel Shabazz

Shabazz recalls, “Growing up, there was only one television in the house, so I only got bits and pieces of what was going on in the outside world, especially regarding the civil rights movement. I saw a beautiful photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for the very first time in Freed’s book, thus helping me better understand what was happening in both the northern and southern cities. Through the artistry of Leonard Freed, I was introduced to the power of documentary photography and the art of visual story telling. Freed’s book enlightened me to the harsh world of inequality, segregation, and struggle. In essence, Black in White America, became an essential study guide introducing me to the real world I would soon have to face, as a boy growing into manhood.“

Shabazz picked up a camera while he was in high school during the 1970s, but it wasn’t until he came home from a tour in the military in 1980 that his passion was revealed. His father, a military photographer himself, saw the that fire in his son, and gave him Freed’s book as an instrumental guide. Shabazz recalls, “He gave me the book so I could study lighting, composition, and black and white photography. Some of the most compelling photographs I made were shot almost right away. The seed had been planted in my mind at nine years old. I see things that people have a tendency to walk by. I take my time to observe what is going on around me.”

Photo: Leonard Freed

Photo: Jamel Shabazz

Freed taught Shabazz how to be a storyteller by virtue of mastering the craft. The greatest teachers lead by example and Freed was no exception to this fact. In the spirit of revolution, the circle spins round once again. Now on the cover of the book is a photograph of a young boy, flexing his bicep. Shabazz observes, “He’s the same age I was when I first picked up this up this book. I was building my mental through this book.”

In the works of Leonard Freed and Jamel Shabazz, we can see the way in which the commitment to truth, justice, and honor is more than a career, it is a spiritual quest, a calling to honor the people of this earth through the creation of the book. I am honored to present the works of Leonard Freed and Jamel Shabazz side by side here.

Photo: Jamel Sbahazz

For More Information, Please Visit
Black in White America
Leonard Freed
Jamel Shabazz

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Photography

Training Days: The Subways Artists Then & Now

Posted on October 5, 2015

Photo: Bil Rock, Min, and Kel in the City Hall lay-up at night, 1983 ©Henry Chalfant

Graffiti is like a virus of the best kind. It resides deep in the heart and it makes its presence known in ways large and small. It travels from writer to writer around the world, bringing different handstyles, letterforms, color combinations, and placements to life. It is here today, gone tomorrow, one of the most ephemeral of all the arts.

Were it not for the photograph, some of the greatest masterpieces of graffiti would be unknown, and so it is with great fortune that Henry Chalfant began taking pictures of New York City trains between the years of 1977-1984. In total he amassed of 800 photographs of full trains from some of the greatest writers working during those years. “I have always been attracted to youthful rebellion and mischief,” Chalfant observes with a gentle laugh.

In order to photograph a full car when it arrived in the station, Chalfant stood on the platform on the opposite side, so that he could have enough distance to get 15-foot sections of the train inside his viewfinder. Using a 50mm lens, Chalfant took four or five photographs of each car, and then spliced them together using a razor and adhesive tape. As a sculptor, Chalfant’s hand was flawless, as he was able to translate the scale of each train to the photographic image. But the skill needed to get these shots? That was like stalking big game.

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

Rodriguez Calero: Urban Martyrs and Latter-Day Santos

Posted on August 7, 2015

Rodríguez Calero, “The Apparition”, 1999, 36 x 24.

“Creation never gets easier, it is a constant struggle,” artist Rodriguez Calero observes. It is an intense undertaking, this desire to transform what exists in the mind’s eye into physical form. Working in collage, Calero creates a world all its own, a world that is at once anointed with spirits and ethereal energies that radiate from her work. Each image becomes an icon, inspiring devotion and creating a state of bliss that is wondrously soothing in its intensity. When taken individually, each is a work holds the power to draw you into its spell; when taken together, the cumulative effect is transformative.

“Urban Martyrs and Latter-Day Santos,” the first museum survey of Calero’s work, opens at El Museo del Barrio, New York, and runs through October 17, 2015. Calero’s original technique is called “acrollage,” a technique of layering glazes of luminous colors with rice and other kinds of paper. The blending of fermenting surfaces and stenciled patterns attains lustrous color and texture. Guest-curated by Alejandro Anreus, the installation includes 29 large acrollage canvases, 19 smaller collages, 13 fotacrolés (altered photography) on canvas board, and 3 works of mixed media on paper.

Born in Puerto Rico and raised in New York, Calero draws on the rich traditions of her background to create a visual landscape that combines surrealist collage, Catholic iconography, medieval religious painting, hip hop, and street culture. The result is rich tapestry that evokes a lush and magical world that beckons from beyond the veil. Calero’s layered glazes are like a spider’s web, at once soft and whimsical, yet strong and intricate. Her work is sensitive and complex, quiet yet vibrant and deep, resonant as a clarion bell that gently tolls in the breeze.

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Rodríguez Calero, “Urban Hood II”, 2014, 48 x 72.

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Painting

Meryl Meisler: Purgatory & Paradise

Posted on August 1, 2015

Plaid Suit and Cadillac in Chelsea, NY, NY, May 1978.

The 1970s was an age of innocent decadence, the time before the fall, a time where the country cracked open and out of it came creatures with big hair and vibrant personality, the kind of characters that have that old school je ne sais quoi that makes their shenanigans a delight to watch.

Take Judi Jupiter as she weighs the situation in the new book by Meryl Meisler, Purgatory & Paradise: SASSY ‘70s Suburbia & The City (Bizarre Publishing). It was July 1977, Westhampton, NY, and Miss Jupiter was taking her top off as she weighed big nuggets of weed on a triple beam balance scale. She looks at the camera through a thicket of bangs all but obscuring her eyes. She’s but one of hundreds of subjects Meisler came upon in her travels across Long Island and NYC, subjects that were outrageously stylish and sexy.

As Meisler writes in the introduction, “This book encapsulates my coming of age: The Bronx, suburbia, The Mystery Club, dance lessons, Girl Scouts, the Rockettes, the circus, school, mitzvahs, proms, feminism, Disco, Go-Go, Jewish and LGBT Pride, the New York streets, friendship, family and love. I had to photograph it to make sense of it all. To hold onto the time, to release and share it, to put it in perspective and move on. It was sassy, but also sweet, and so was I.”

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Judi Jupiter Weighs the Situation, Westhampton, NY, July 1977.

Street Ventriloquist, NY, NY, July 1979.

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

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.

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

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

Arlene Gottfried: Mommie

Posted on July 3, 2015

Photograph by Arlene Gottfried

Photographs by Arlene Gottfried

Last summer I had the great pleasure of speaking with Arlene Gottfried at length, well, listening mostly, listening and asking questions and then listening again as Arlene spoke of her life behind the camera. A second generation New Yorker, Arlene has born witness to the people that have made this city one of the greatest places on earth. Her photographs never fail to delight and astound with their distinctive blend of compassion, style, and grace, with a knowing nod, a giggle, and a wink. This is New York, after all.

Arlene is unassuming yet powerful. The intensity of her presence can best be felt when looking at her photograph or listening to her sing gospel. I remember hearing her in church on several occasions, overwhelmed and overjoyed by the spirit she channels. It is this spirit, this very soul, that makes Arlene one of the most compelling artists I know. And so it was with great honor that last summer I interviewed Arlene about her life, her family, and her work for her forthcoming book, Mommie (powerHouse Books).

I remember seeing the mock up for Mommie at powerHouse years ago, once again overwhelmed by the depth and profundity of her work. To be honest, I was not ready for this level of truth, this intense bond between generations of women, all flowers from the same root. Mommie is Arlene’s fourth book with powerHouse, and perhaps the most personal of an incredibly intimate body of work.

As I listened to Arlene speak, I realized she was a woman who has kept a great many private matters just so, and with Mommie she was sharing more than her memories, she was baring witness as the family historian. As time passes, we come to terms with the eternal circle of life and death and birth once more. With Mommie, we quietly observe, we feel, and we think; Arlene’s photographs have the cumulative effect of softly sinking into your body and changing the very nature of your being.

In that same way, the book is an object unto itself, an object to be held, much like a family album. powerHouse would like to use real upholstery fabric to wrap the book’s boards (the front cover, spine, and back cover) and has decided to create a Indie GoGo account to support the production costs. In order to share Arlene’s story, they asked me to interview her a couple of months ago, and this time, Arlene sang “Amazing Grace,” a moment that be stilled my soul.

The video is now live, and the Indie GoGo campaign has begun. We invite you to visit the campaign at MOMMIE, and support the project. Among the rewards offered are Arlene’s first three powerHouse Books: Bacalaitos & Fireworks, Midnight, and Sometimes Overwhelming, each one a treasury of New York City history, street photography, and style, each one a love letter from the bottom of her heart.

Photograph by Arlene Gottfried

Photograph by Arlene Gottfried

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Manhattan, Photography, Women

Andy Warhol: The Complete Commissioned Record Covers 1949-1987

Posted on July 1, 2015

Melodic Magic, Vol 1, 1953. All images © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The album cover is an icon of the past, of an age when vinyl was something to be collected. The 12 x 12 inch surface was a canvas ripe for exploration, the square format offering infinite interpretations. The album cover, such as it was, provided a space for the artist to put us in the mood, to seduce us with images, words, ideas. It offered a space for contemplation, as the record spun round, creating a delicious interplay between audio and visual experience of the work. As a result, album covers, in certain cases, have become icons themselves.

ndy Warhol designed his first record cover in 1949; clearly he sensed the value of the medium, for he launched his career phoning record companies and soliciting them. Over the years, until his death in 1987, he created more than fifty covers which are presented beautifully in Andy Warhol: The Complete Commissioned Record Covers 1949-1987, Catalogue Raisonné, 2nd Edition by Paul Maréchal (Prestel). Produced at nearly actual size, with photographs of the original works, along with entries detailing the story of each album, this catalogue is a compendium of sumptuous delight.

Warhol’s gift for blurring the lines between high and low art and be felt in each and every illustration he created. His best known works, the covers of The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967) and the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers (1971), appear alongside lesser known works such as Monk featuring Thelonious Monk with Sonny Rollins and Frank Foster (1954) Giant Size $1.57 Each, released in conjunction with the exhibition The Popular Image at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art (1963). Taken together as a group, we can follow the thread of Warhol’s transformation from illustrator to artist, his visual vocabulary becoming more exact and extreme as his ideas take hold.

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Monk, 1954. All images © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

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

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.”

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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