Posts from the “Manhattan” Category

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

Bonz Malone: Flo-Master

Posted on June 16, 2014

I first met Bonz Malone at Housing Works Bookstore on Crosby Street. I sat at a table in the back, which afforded the best view of the place, both the ground floor and the mezzanine. When Bonz arrived it was as though, and he sat down beside me and composed perfect sentences out of thin air, and made me conscious of the elegance that comes with precision. He also made taking notes utterly delightful. He never spoke so fast as to out run my pen, and more often than not, I could sit quietly, reposed with pen in hand and pd in palm and listen, really listen, as the words fell from his tongue and his lips and splashed on the page.

And so it was, the inevitable needs no plan, as I put fingertip to keyboard to send this note, and it took form in words because it be like that. Words, these words, they never stop, they are but are like limitless flows from the fountain of thought. And so it is that I asked questions and Bonz Malone replied, much to my delight.

Miss Rosen: I have quietly admired your way with words for so long I can’t even remember, but I feel like Ricky Powell is the dude who put me on. He has a photo of you that has a certain je ne sais quoi, and when I first heard your name, I thought to myself, “I better go find out.” And so I did, and thus, my admiration grew. I wonder if you might speak about when you first realized you had a way with words, both in the spoken and written worlds, and how that became a source of power, pride, and .. pleasure ..

BONZ MALONE: Growing up in New York City, you unconsciously pick up a unique swagger that can only be appreciated by someone else who has it or someone who wants to copy it. At home, my mother (An English major from Cambridge) trained me in the King’s English. Whenever I made a mistake in pronunciation or I misused a word, I was quickly corrected and had to look it up. She never told me what anything meant. But in the streets, I paid attention to the way others expressed themselves and it was very different. It was relaxed, abrupt, more general and less deliberate than a scholar of Oxford or Cambridge would ever care for. So I knew not to give anybody grammatical lessons or I’d be picking up teeth. I did notice that there were a selected few “Street Guys” who were very charismatic and had the knack for making people either laugh at everything they said or they made people piss on themselves with their life-threatening statements. Either way, I was diggin’ the way these guys communicated and quietly studied their poetic parlance. I thought that it would help me get “connected” and make me seem more cool and it did, but it took many years. It wasn’t until I began writing graffiti that I started to understand the power that words really had. As a Christian, I had been taught to tell the truth and I believed that nothing was more liberating or more powerful than walking the path of the righteous man. As a criminal, however, nothing was more important in the streets as loyalty, courage and honor. These are part of a code and when they become intrinsic, you become real, which is the street equivalent to True. When I realized that I could both “Keep it real and be True to the game” that’s when I started writing what I thought, but in the way that others spoke. So then I became influential to both by unifying these principles.

I’ve been enjoying your posts on FB for the distinctive mix of brilliance and audacity. Please talk about how the word is a vehicle for awakening the mind, heart, and spirit?

During the 80’s and 90’s, I saw the spotlight shift from hip-hop the culture to rap, its selfish, yet talented sibling. The glamour of guns and violence was fueled by drug sales and record labels were their laundry mats. At night I was on the streets or in the train yards lookin for the “White Whale”, but during business hours, I was either Script Consultant for the movie “Juice” at Island Records/Island Films or at The Source, introducing the Notorious B.I.G. as “The King of New York.” That piece is significant because I created that title as the name of the cover story on him. No one called him that until I wrote that article, in fact, the title (which is coveted by rappers that aren’t even from NYC to this day) didn’t even exist! If I could do that and even now, 90% of his fans don’t even know it, then I most certainly know that writing can do all three of those things you’ve described. If Jehovah God (Yahweh) himself uses written communication to enlighten us and instruct us on how to benefit ourselves, there can’t be a better example of its power. After Biggie’s demise I began taking on social issues. I figured, I had already given hip-hop an alphabet being “The Father of Phonetic Spelling” just to get people who were illiterate in my neighborhood to read; now I was gonna drug the public with phat pieces of sweet gum, which was basically, MC’ing on a white sheet of paper to my own rhythm and makin’ niggaz dance to the “other beat”. The only difference this time was that I was committed to making them aware of their power through social change and not about glorifying rappers.

I am curious about the way in which people respond to your work. Like, for example, this interview is my form of response #moremoremore .. I trust there have been many deeply felt personal moments of on all emotional fronts, be it joy, sadness, anger, and surprise among others. Why do you think words have the power to evoke such powerful responses from those who read them? What does it feel like to receive such strong feedback to your work and how does this feed your creative process?

BONZ MALONE: I’ve had every kind of response I can think of. Just the other day I was in Dunkin’ Doughnut at 1am and a guy walked in recognized me and told me about an article I wrote years ago at Vibe in which I interviewed a Shi Yang Ming, a Shaolin Warrior Monk about the use of the Swastika as a symbol of peace. It blew his mind completely. He had never known that it was a peace sign and that Hitler reversed the image, thus making it a negative the way the Yin/Yan symbol demonstrates the two. We talked for hours. It was very humbling as it has always been such to see and hear the deep emotion that a reader expresses after being affected by your work, especially if it’s positive. I’ve learned, however, not to interfere with their interpretation. If it is something that leaves a positive outlook, then it’s all good. It’s important to say things that after years of understanding, we now have the courage to say. Never would I want to let my society tell me what to buy, what to do, what to think. You have to embrace power in order to use it and many are still afraid of theirs. The pen is only mightier than the sword when it’s in the hands of someone who knows how to use it. Being a dope writer is only sexy to an intellectual. Being a great student of life and a better thinker and connector of principles to applicable situations is by far, more needed, yet both will inevitably make your words necessary should you have the courage to write with authority. It’s not the letters or the reactions from an audience or even the prestigious awards that can be won that you need to give you validation because most great writers don’t have those things, but all great writers know that their work is dope before it has even been proof read or they’ve clicked the spelling and grammar keys on their computer, if you have a computer. What if you don’t have a computer? Auto-Correct doesn’t make you an intelligent writer. Reading and meditating on the rhythm that the writer writes to and understanding it, even if you don’t agree with the reasoning, is making you better. Facebook has made me a better forecaster of trends and more knowledgeable about when to put the word out and to what degree of audacity. Twitter edits my thoughts, which sharpens my words into concise and powerful blasts, so when people come up to me and talk about my past work or my page or a cop recognizes me in a restaurant and asks me for my autograph, I feel the same way I did every time I walked into a subway car looking for my tag and saw my name up there and I remember who showed me how to speak, act and write like that. The ones who validated themselves and I just want the blessing to be able to do it forever.

I remember you said something to the effect that you would rather wait ten years to produce work that would last 100 years, rather than to satiate yourself with instant gratification. Where does that patience and discipline come from?

BONZ MALONE: 50% is conceit and the other 50% is procrastination. Writing is performing brain surgery on yourself! It is a reclusive form of art that’s lonely and that can lead to alcoholism and depression. Many writers hate writing. What they love is haven written something of worth and of interest. Edison failed for years before he stole God’s idea. Einstein meditated for ten years before he wrote the theory of relativity. That is truly amazing when you consider that although, he possessed considerable wisdom, he was smart enough to take the time needed to look at things from every possible aspect. If you are committed and honest and have the patience to perfect something, it could mean the difference in people’s lives! I believe that because I’ve seen proof of it in my own work. The things that I’ve written, both privately and professionally, have neither been outdated or undone. As a graffiti writer, I used Flo-Master because it had a dark, shiny pigmentation that made my name look good when I wrote over other niggaz. Plus, it was permanent and that is the whole point of doin’ dope shit when you’re alive is to leave a permanent mark on people’s minds and on history itself. As an Actor, Writer and Producer, I get paid every time my work appears in almost any form for the rest of my life. Even after I die, my name will still be making money, so I better earn that shit.

RADIKAL magazine *2002 Rock Steady Crew feature. — with R.I.P Frosty Freeze, Capital Q Unique, David Nelson, FeverOne Rock Steady, POPMASTER FABEL, Julio Cesar Umaña Rodriguez, Mitchell Graham, Bonz Malone, Rock Steady Crew, Brina AlienNess Martinez, Cookie Wear and Marc Lemberger. Photo courtesy Jorge “Fabel” Pabon.

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Bronx, Brooklyn, Graffiti, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Slutlust: A Love Letter to My Sun

Posted on June 3, 2014

I used to write poetry when I was young. Mostly to girls that wanted nothing to do with a introverted and timid me, hence the name SLUTLUST. I loved E.E. Cummings poetry when I was younger, The way he did whatever he wanted to do with a sentence and how it wasn’t the typical romantic I-love-you-you-love-me crap, you really didn’t get a sense of what he was trying to express unless you read it with a decoder or a kaleidoscope. So I would write my poems like that – they were as safe as they were intense and if the girl got it then I would pronounce it true love. Of course that never happened.

I grew up in a poor and emotionally/physically violent household. I didn’t identify with the machismo Dominicans are known for instead I identified with the suburban family’s on prime time sitcoms making growing up very awkward for me. I felt I was better than the constant bickering my family embraced as an everyday norm while my family viewed me as a coward for not. The older I got the further I’d tried to get away from them. At the height of my dark period I hid from my family for a year when I lived only a block away.

Many people don’t know this about me but the first time I tried cocaine I was about 26 years old with a 2 year old Sun and a woman that wanted nothing to do with me. I was so desperate to try to maintain a family built solely on responsibility and not love that I brought my 1st 50 bag and gave it to her as a gift – in hopes that we would have a good time and our “family” would have a fighting chance. She left, the addiction stayed. They say keys open doors, and when I started dealing coke opened up every door you can imagine in downtown New York and Williamsburg Brooklyn. Those photos you selected aren’t photos of people doing drugs and partying – they are photos of a underground NY scene from the last 4 years mixed with blue blood WASPs from the Hampton & poor Midwestern hipsters mixed with New York City natives doing MY drugs.

I loved pop art because of the colors and it reminded me of the comic books I would to hide from my family in. I loved Basquiat because he drew with whatever medium his personal history allotted. I love 35mm film because it can’t be corrupted or easily altered like digital. When I came across Reza (TheArabParrot.com) I became a huge fan, in part because we ran in the same circles and punished ourselves with the same substances while couch surfing with any pretty little rich girl that would let us inside. He didn’t write much though, he would just let his pictures tell the story – mostly shots of him hanging around LA/ NY/ Miami with his friends wasted in bed with flashy and artsy randoms. During that time I was a heavy and well known dealer – without the incriminating evidence.

One day while I was doing a “delivery” during the Memorial Day weekend in 2010 and I was hit by a hit & run in Brooklyn. According to the people that witnessed it I should have been dead considering I flew over 4 lanes of traffic.Instead I walked away without a scratch, only a minor limp as I turned down medical and police help due to my illegal cargo. I completed my runs and went home where I fell in a deep survivors guilt type of depression. The only thought was out of all the great people that suffer these tragic misfortunes why was I allowed to walk away from mine? I was nobody but a bottom feeder parading around like a sad clown from dive bar to nightclub abusing small talk to survive. I wasn’t a good son to my mother a good brother to my sibling nor a good father to my son.

Then I thought about my Sun and what he would know of his father. At the time he had just turned 8 years old and was a pretty smart kid. I was pretty sure all he would know of me is whatever poison my estranged and very bitter baby mother knew of me. So I said fuck it, the future is now and these kids grow up with smartphones and web access. The next day I brought a cheap Polaroid film camera from a 99 cent store. I wasn’t even sure the camera worked. I got a bunch of film and started talking photos of everything I saw and documenting them in a blog I started to write just for him. I used all I learned poetry wise and just stretched it into a autobiographical depiction of my every day life complete with crappy film photos. Thorns and all I didn’t hide anything. the one thing I wish I had from my father (who I wasn’t raised with and barely know and don’t have the desire to) was the truth, and idea of how he lived. I felt that was the greatest gift I could give to my Sun.

After a couple of posts somehow through Twitter my friends found it, loved it, then Mike (MINT) got a hold of it and the rest is history. The mother of my child always said that I was worth more to my sun dead. Now I do art to prove her right.

Art & Text by Slutlust

Categories: 1990s, Art, Graffiti, Manhattan, Photography, Poetry

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

Jane Dickson: The Last Days of Babylon

Posted on July 12, 2013

Throughout 70s and 80s the Times Square was a haven for XXX theaters, go-go girls, pimps, whore houses, rent boys, hustlers, thieves, dealers, and lowlifes on the make. Police and city authorities had declared the area as DMZ for crime and sex. The 1977 debut of Show World across 42nd Street from the Port Authority Bus Terminal was the high-water mark for Times Square’s Era of Errors. It had class.

Successive mayors attempted to purify Times Square without success, for the Mafia-owned establishments were protected by the First Amendment. Finally in 1995 Rudy Giuliani enacted adult zoning laws to end the magnificent wickedness and the following year every XXX theaters and porno shops closed on a rainy afternoon with the moving crews loading salacious merchandise into trucks, as the tearful affectionados of sleaze chanted on the sidewalk, “Fuck Rudy G.”

All along the Minnesota Strip pimps in fur coats hijacked teenage runaways straight off a bus from the Midwest and slick hustlers struck cowboy poses on the street corners, while dope-hungry muggers trailed unsuspecting hicks down dark streets. The action should have tapered off Christmas Eve, except the players on the Strip were dedicated to acting naughty and not the least bit nice. Tonight was no exception.

The glowing marquees and flashing neon billboards camouflaged the lurking danger of Times Square. On the sidewalk two young boys were rummaged through a fallen man’s pockets. No one interfered with the robbery and few people made eye contact, unless they loved trouble.

A brutish bouncer stopped a young blonde girl before the go-go lounge, then she produced an ID and danced a seductive Watusi as an audition. The doorman waved the teenager inside the Dollhouse, as Times Square swallowed another runaway faster than a starving shark.

The Dollhouse’s DJ segued from RING MY BELL to BROWN SUGAR and on stage the naked redhead cupped her breasts before a middle-aged man. The plaid-suited businessman was bald and overweight, but the $20 in his hand transformed him to Robert Redford, as he slipped the crisp bill beneath teenager’s G-string.

Times Square’s best pinball wizards gathered around the ‘KISS’, as the champ bumped the machine with his groin and they nodded each time the scoreboard tocked another free game. The champ was on a roll, then the arcade’s front door opened for a frigid draft and a deathly thin player commented, “Damn, one of them Minnesota girls has come in from the cold.”

The go-go girl hooked her arm inside the punk’s elbow. He wasn’t her type, but a woman on her own was a walking target on the Strip and even after 2am Times Square wasn’t ready to call it a night.

Men crowded into a theater featuring the hit XXX film BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR and a pimp strutted across Broadway with two teens in skimpy silks. After midnight on 42nd Street everyone was working overtime.

Artwork by Jane Dickson
Text by Peter Nolan Smith,
from THE LAST DAYS OF BABYLON

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Manhattan, Painting, Poetry

Grégoire Alessandrini: New York in the 90s

Posted on June 27, 2013

New York City in the 90s was a world unto itself. It kicked off the new decade by reaching its highest murder rate to date, while the twin crises of crack and AIDS had plunged the city into a desperate state. Yet, despite the darkness that loomed right before the dawn, New York was also a place of unbridled creativity that expressed itself all day and all night long. Graff had left the trains and was taking to the street. Nickel bags could be had in candy shops. Trains were $1, $1.15, $1.25. David Dinkins was Mayor, and Law & Order had just begun to air on TV.

New York in the 90s was a turning point in our changing world, a time and a place where the last hurrahs of the 70s and 80s gave way to the new, millennial Quality of Life. As Guiliani took power, things began to change, slowly but surely the heart of the City was bled away. But, before it was all but finally erased, Grégoire Alessandrini was on the scene with his camera, snapping away. I had the great pleasure of discovering his blog a couple of weeks back, and dropping him a line to reminisce in words and photographs. I am pleased to share Alessandrini’s work here, along with a link at the end for your viewing pleasure. It’s a treasure chest of memories…

Miss Rosen: Please talk about New York City in the 90s. What do you see as the ethos of the city at this time, perhaps as it was when you began this series in 1991, and how it transformed over the course of the decade. What marks this period as distinct in the City’s history for you, and what lessons did you learn, observing life through the camera lens?

Grégoire Alessandrini: I arrived in New York in the early 90s to become a film student. What I immediately loved in the city was this feeling of being in an American movie or a movie set. The city was just liked I had imagined it and somehow still very much like I had seen it in films. I’m thinking of Taxi driver, Marathon Man, Shaft, or even old Hollywood classics where you could see NY in the 40s or 50s.

You could tell that the city had probably changed a lot since the 60s and 70s but there was this kind of classic American dimension. I loved the old signs, the restaurants that looked like they didn’t change for decades, old dive bars, the old Mom & Pop stores on the Lower East Side and in Harlem, as well as neighborhoods with their own great identities like Times Square, the Meat Packing District, or the East Village—which was were you wanted to be at the time.

You also felt that the arty NY of the 60s and 70s was not that far back, not completely dead yet… It felt like the city I was discovering was still very much similar to the way it was when Warhol, Keith Haring, or Basquiat were walking in the Soho streets.

Soho was already cleaned up, trendy and expensive but you just had to walk a few blocks over and you were in Alphabet City or in the Lower East Side where most uptown residents were scared to go. Iggy Pop was still living in Alphabet City and many artists were still renting storefronts in the Lower East Side to use as studios and homes.

To me this is very typical of 90s New York. The “safe” neighborhoods could be next to the “bad” ones and it seemed perfectly normal. New Yorkers knew perfectly the invisible frontiers between these different worlds, they knew where they could go and when.

It is definitely true that the city was somehow decrepit, a bit dark and dangerous, but this was fascinating and you felt so much part of the city itself that danger was not really an issue. You would hear horrible stories all of the time but yet, you felt like exploring even more. Mayor Dinkins was in office at the time and the arrival of Giuliani was definitely a sign that change was coming…

Your work feels primarily like a series of cityscapes, of the city streets and buildings as the subject of your work, of New York as a kind of persona whose personality is known by those who pound her pavement and breathe her filthy air. Even your photographs of people feel very integrated into their context, as part of a greater energy that is New York itself.

What did you come to discover about the reality of our shared daily life, and how New York imparts this feeling in us? How do you think that the architecture and the city planning make transform our experience in public space.

What was most exciting in the 1990s was this feeling of adventure you had when hanging out in the city, day or night. When I starting taking photos, it was the graphic quality of the city that interested me. Walking in the Meat Packing District or Alphabet City was a great experience. And it felt the same in most neighborhoods.

Yes, it was dirty, smelly and scary at times but it was part of the city’s soul and you never thought that it needed to be cleaned up. It was the ideal setting for whatever you wanted your life or your New York experience to be. The state and look of the city also gave you an incredible feeling of freedom. You really felt that the city was yours and that you just needed to be here to be part of it and a real New Yorker.

At first, I was particularly interested in locations and what made them special more than people and you are right, at the beginning people were just part of the places I was photographing. Maybe because of how fascinating New York’s neighborhoods were to me and because of the incredible cinematic quality of some of these areas. Every area had its own mood, personality, its own vibe, and very specific residents.

New Yorkers are great in their eccentricity, originality, and energy… so of course I had to document this as well. My images of the Wigstock events in Tompkins Park show how crazy people could be… But being a movie freak and having studied film, I guess that my photos were primarily an attempt to capture these moods, these ambiances more than a sociological or classic instant photography approach.

What are the most notable changes to public life that you witnessed over the decade ? I realize this is a vast, sweeping question, given how much change came down under the Giulian regime. But if there was something that you noticed as that which was consistent, that which began to disappear, so to speak, as the City cleaned up and improved its “Quality of Life”, what might be those things that were lost in the name of progress ?

One of the landmarks of Giuliani’s era for me was the transformation of 42nd Street and the Times Square area. The zoning laws that made it impossible for sex related businesses to remain in the area.

It was actually very amusing to see porn shops presenting old Disney VHS tapes in their front window in order to stay in business…But the message was clear: “The party is over and all the sleaze has to go to make room for a family friendly environment.”

Giuliani’s time was also the time were drugs and drug dealers were heavily targeted. I really believe that it is also at the origins of the city’s big change. Crack was a very important factor of the city’s safety problems and bad reputation. It was really everywhere… in any neighborhood, in the streets, even sold in some stores, at any moment of day or night.

After the dealers of 7th Street between B and C or on 10th Street were chased out, Tompkins Park started to change (since it had also been raided by police during the 1980s to kick out the homeless camp that was installed in it), as well as Avenue A and then the whole Lower East Side…

The East Village population also started changing in the 90s… Hipsters were already moving in and I remember how in the late 90s. The area was becoming the new hangout of people obviously coming from uptown or the other boroughs to party and drink on Saturday night. Rents were already going up and it was becoming difficult to afford living in the neighborhood.

All the pioneers who had opened stores and friends who were living in Alphabet City, on Ludlow, or around Delancey had already started leaving the area in the late 90s. The transformation had already started and a new population was starting to move in.

What seems very sad to me with the recent evolution and transformation of the city is the fact that it is obviously irreversible. Everyone loves NY because it is constantly evolving. Every time you come back, there’s something new. A record shop can become a bagel place, an old Lower East Side Mom & Pop store, an art gallery, etc.

But what can an HSBC bank or a 7-Eleven become? And with the arrival of the real estate giants, all this big groups and corporations, the city seems to start looking the same everywhere. What will make the Lower East Side different from Midtown when Bowery will only be made of 50-stories glass buildings? New York is not just getting cleaned up… It is literally being rebuilt (or destroyed?). And it is known that you definitely can’t artificially create a city’s soul.

My heart was broken when the Palladium was destroyed to make room for NYU dorms with a very dull architecture. Nowadays, this kind of destruction seems to be a daily occurrence in Bloomberg’s Manhattan…

See More !

All photographs by
Grégoire Alessandrini

Categories: 1990s, Art, Manhattan, 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

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

Engines of War: The Interview

Posted on April 22, 2013

Anthony Suau
Nearly 20,000 people…, 2003, Photograph, 13 x 19 in, Edition of 12

On March 28, Jamel Shabazz invited me to the opening of Engines of War, a group show curated by Charles Dee Mitchell and Cynthia Mulcahy at Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert, Inc. in New York. The show overwhelmed, humbled, and inspired me with its well-thought mix of photojournalism, documentary work, portraiture, and video, which combined to a visceral feeling of fireworks exploding inside my chest, my heart beating faster and faster until I had to turn away to draw breath.

And in the midst of the intensity were images like Anthony Suau’s featured above, a respite, a smile, a giggle, a semblance of surreality and absurdity that makes me wonder what it’s all for. But it is not for me to answer, only for me to listen, and it is with great pleasure and reverence that I share here an interview with the curators, Mr. Mitchell and Ms. Mulcahy.

Please talk about the inspiration for Engines of War. What is it about this topic, and the way in which it is framed in this show, that is even more relevant now, in retrospect ten years after we first invaded Iraq ?

Cynthia Mulcahy: Dee Mitchell and I began talking in 2007 about curating an exhibition that examined war and out of these discussions came two exhibitions about war, both focusing on the first decade of the 21st century: XXI: Conflicts in a New Century in a City of Dallas cultural space in 2011 and this exhibition Engines of War in 2013 with a slightly narrower focus on the United States wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As curators of Engines of War we wanted to look at all aspects of a nation at war from the soldiers who fight the wars and their recruitment, the civilian populations of the United States and those of Iraq and Afghanistan, the politicians and governments and the media covering the wars, and we also wanted to look at the war industry itself and the manufacturing of weapons and military equipment and technology. In like manner, it was also very important for us to look at relevant issues related to a decade of war such as returning wounded veterans, civilian casualties, PTSD and the rise of military suicides.

As a nation now in our longest war in US history in Afghanistan, and having just passed the ten year mark on the US-led Iraq invasion, it certainly seems an appropriate and necessary time to reflect on our past history in the form of a curated visual arts exhibition examining war.

Jamel Shabazz
Cadet Major Mateo…, 2010
Digital C-Print photograph, 11 x 14 in, Edition of 25, Signed

Please talk about the photographers you selected, the stories, and truths they tell. I was very much intrigued by the group as a collective, the sum of the parts greater than the whole.

How did you conceptualize these specific photographer to tell the story of the Iraq War ? What does the group as a whole speak to about our assumptions about war as an industry, an act of aggression, and a “morality” play ? What can we learn by virtue of unconnected stories threaded together through the curatorial eye ?

Cynthia Mulcahy: : We waded through quite a bit of material, of which there is no dearth in the 21st century and the revolution in communications technology, in deciding what to include in the exhibition. We very much wanted to have a multiplicity of artistic practice approaches as well as perspectives, so we looked at the work of not just photojournalists and social documentary photographers but also street photographers and research-based practice artists as well as primary source material such as the war video game and digital comics series. The final contributors include American, Iraqi, British and Dutch artists and some original source material. Together and individually, these artists all powerfully either document or address the issues we as curators were looking at for the Engines of War exhibition and we hope the work as a whole serves to underscore the crucial societal role photojournalists and visual artists play in capturing and contextualizing history for the rest of us.

Eugene Richards
Shurvon at 6 a.m., 2008
Silver gelatin photograph, 20 x 24 in, Edition 4 of 30

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad

The photograph is both art and artifact, a witness to history and evidence of what has come before. I was particularly struck when looking at the dead and wounded. Please talk about how photography allows us to observe the horrors of war in what is a complex and compelling silent space. Where is the line when it comes to speaking these hard truths ? Or should there not be a line and should we be asked to go as deep as the “reality” goes ?

Charles Dee Mitchell: When planning the exhibition, we knew we would be addressing both the home front and the actual theater of war. (That in itself is an interesting phrase,) In its role as reportage, photography is always engaged in capturing a specific moment, and it is those moments of extreme human suffering or tragedy that are, as you said, the most problematic.

Working on the home front with veterans who have returned from the war with traumatic physical and mental injuries, Eugene Richards develops a close relationship with his subjects and becomes privy to intimate moments that when we encounter them in a gallery may seem disturbing or even invasive. But there is a shared intimacy here that infuses the work with the humanity and social urgency that has distinguished all of Richards’ projects.

On the other hand, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is working on the ground during an engagement that has horribly bloody consequences. His photographs are unflinching documents of modern, mechanized warfare. We might see similar images in the press when reading accounts of the war. Their presence in the gallery affords viewers’ a chance, if they choose, to engage them with greater intimacy. Ghaith’s work epitomizes the duality of “art and artifact” that you mention in your question. When you ask if there is a line being crossed here, I would answer that there is no line in this setting. Photographers like Ghaith are doing an important and dangerous job. Engines of War would not be what we hope is the honest inquiry it is without both his presence and Eugene Richards’ contribution.

Lisa Barnard
Floor Plan, 2013, C-Print on gloss, 50 x 2 in, Edition of 5

I was struck by the table downstairs that is a floor plan of an industrial base. Please talk about the industry of war and its connection to the media as a machine. How does the photograph/art work/exhibition both challenge and substantiate the military industrial complex as a being of supreme power (so to speak).How does the photograph interact with the subject of war itself ? How does its stillness in time call us to a kind of attention, a care and consideration for the subject itself, and does this attention cause us to question or reinforce our previous assumptions about the act of war by the US ?

Charles Dee Mitchell: The blueprint produced by Lisa Barnard depicts not an “industrial base” but rather the floor plan of a trade show devoted to drone technology. Its layout is familiar to anyone who has ever attended a trade show or for that matter an art fair. Major exhibitors have large central locations with smaller exhibitors in less expensive booths along the perimeter. There are food courts, restrooms, and lounge areas. This piece, perhaps more so than any work in the exhibition, demonstrates that war and the technology that fuels it is big business. We presented the work on a glass-topped table so viewers’ could peer down at it and explore it as one does a map or a maze. Although a wall label explained exactly what the image presented, most people seemed to find the label after spending time with the floor plan. The label sent them back to Barnard’s image with more specific information to bring to their experience of its cool abstraction. This was the type of process we hope repeats itself in many ways throughout the exhibition.

Christopher Morris
Cadets listen…, 2009
Archival Ink Jet, 20 x 24 in, Edition 1/6

Benjamin Lowy
Iraq | Perspectives I…, 2003-2008, Digital C-Print photograph, 20 x 24 in, Edition of 10, 2 AP

Engines of War
Now through May 4

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

Cacy Forgenie: Jaded

Posted on September 7, 2010

I met Cacy Forgenie back when he worked at Mass Appeal, and though it’s been years since we’ve last spoke, it’s amazing how easy it is to resume the conversation mid flow. On September 11, “Jaded” a collection of Cacy’s photos, opens at Chi Chiz, 135 Christopher Street. The moment I saw these photos, I had all sorts of questions for him. Check it out…

This collection of work is called “Jaded” which resonates strongly with me as a New Yorker. Why did you select this title to accompany these scenes of disaster, distress, and mayhem ?

When I was approached to do the show a few months ago I was prepared to show images that I thought corresponded with the space and what being in that space, a bar frequented by intergenerational black, gay or bi-sexual men of different socio-economic backgrounds, implied: escape and desire. After some discussion with my partner, I realized that the folks who frequent Chi Chiz are probably people who have seen it or done it all in regards to sex and eroticism in NYC and New Jersey.

I decided to show images of a type of experience that may have been internalized but not necessarily discussed: violence, harassment and police terror, things and experience that may retard compassion. I thought it would be too conventional to show things like a sex act or an implied sex act, to people who were so sophisticated. Very few people have seen my disaster photographs in New York outside of newspapers and magazines and galleries in Chelsea. I wanted a new audience, and I wanted to infuse a sense of recognition and compassion in the space. I wanted to build a type of solidarity from our shared experiences as black men becoming numb by the things we witnessed and experienced. I wanted to say this is what we’re not talking about with each other in this space.

Were these images you consciously sought out, or were they something, that over time, you realized were a collection unto themselves ?

I don’t seek these images, I stumble upon them. If something is in progress I run towards it, I chase it.

One of my earliest supporters was Derrick Adams. He saw something that I didn’t really pay much attention to because photographing mayhem had become ordinary for me. It was normal for me to walk out of my apt and see someone with a gunshot wound. It was normal for me to cross Atlantic Avenue and see a body in the middle of the road. It was normal for me to see a car crash. I would just “run into things” or have something, like the police car crash pointed out Carmen Hammons, pointed to me. 9 out of 10 times, I happen on the scene intuitively or unconsciously. My only Control is the camera I have and how I chose to compose the image. Whenever I would photograph something crazy, I’d ring up Derrick and say, “Guess what I photographed today!”

Back in 2007-2008 I was nominated for a Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award and Derrick suggested I show these images to them and also at The RUSH ARTS Gallery Project Space. I knew the images were there but I didn’t think about organizing them in this way. Originally, I imagined publishing them in a book alongside my photographs of rappers, models and actors partying in NYC and Miami.

Why do you think it is we “enjoy” looking at photographs like these?

Danger is exciting from a distance, and looking at images like these offers us a thrill and a wonder. They’re like mini-horror movies, some of these images are. Some of them make your heart race. Theres also an aspect of nostalgia, especially as a New Yorker because you remember a kinetic NY before 9/11 happened.

I am particularly struck by the photo of the cab on fire. Please talk about what is happening in that image.

I call it “The Fire Next Time” because it makes me think about the James Baldwin book and the Jim Crow stuff black people, black men, deal with trying to get around NYC in cabs.

There are many frames of this event but I chose to print this frame because of the nonchalance of NYers on the sidewalk: they didn’t care too much. I photographed that image with a Kodak Disposable Camera. I think I was living in Queens or in The Bronx in 1999, and I was a year and a half back from living in the UK, trying to break into the NYC magazine market while simultaneously trying to launch a fashion magazine called IFF with a girl from Denmark that Summer. We’d finished a meeting and I was on my way to B&H to look at cameras. At this time I was using a Polaroid SX-70 Alpha and an broken Olympus Stylus Zoom. The Polaroid was a burden to carry and the Olympus was useless. Some photographer friends suggested I graduate to a larger format and try studio work so I was off to B&H to look at used Hassleblads.

As I am walking up 8th Avenue I see smoke. Curious, I run toward the smoke and there it was. I didn’t have a camera so I looked for, and found, a newsstand and bought a disposable and started photographing the scene from the middle of 8th Avenue until I got close to the flames which were on 34th Street. Disposables have fixed lenses. If I wanted a better picture I would have to get closer and thats what I did. To get close to the cab I had to hop a barricade that was part of a street construction site blocking 34th Street. And as I am running and jumping I can feel this surge of energy course through me. My heart is thumping wildly and I could feel the heat kissing my face.This might sound corny but I am an Aries, a fire element, and I am not afraid of fire. In fact Cacy means brave in Gaelic. It sounds all kinds of wrong but fire and I are OK.

Getting the picture was thrilling but around me, people were afraid for me, they thought the cab would explode, they thought I would be burned or choke from the smoke. I had to get the picture. It was the first time I felt pleasure photographing a disaster. As for why the cab was on fire, it was the engine. It burst into flames. The driver left the scene before the cops came. I saw him take his stuff and walk away. I stayed and photographed everything I could, until there was nothing left for the fire to burn. All that was left was a steel frame on the corner of 34th & 8th.

Why did you decide to include photographs from 9/11 in this series ? How do you think we as New Yorkers now frame 9/11 as part of our experience in this city?

When 9/11 happened, I was contributing to an Italian hip hop magazine based in Milan. The editor called to check up on me on the day I decided to stop photographing Ground Zero. As I was describing what I saw to her, I burst into tears. I was on auto pilot until then. Recounting what I saw helped me I realize what happened. It was weird. I must have tucked myself away during the photographic process because I wasn’t grieving while there. And I chose to be there.

I was in bed in the Bronx, listening to Howard Stern when Howard announced that a plane had crashed into one of the Towers. I got out of bed, hopped in the shower, got dressed, caught the D before service ended at 59th Street, hopped on a bus to Times Square, ran from Times Square to Lower Manhattan via the West Side Highway, stood on what was a Tower and photographed what I saw. For hours and hours. And I did the same thing the next day until I had enough.

I wanted to show bodies in distress, experiencing trauma or in recovery in Jaded. And even tho I spent about two and a half days photographing Ground Zero, I didn’t have those images explicitly. Those photographs have phantoms. I try to limit my inclusion of those images when doing projects because I am not comfortable looking at them. 9/11 was both a psychic and physical disturbance.

During our studio visit I showed the curator a proof of a book I was working on; it had just two images from that time. He’d also saw a print (one of the two) from my LIVE! From New York show at RUSH and thought they would work well together. It an unconscious assemblage of time and image, really. Fate. After we nailed the date and the time for the show, I realized that images from 9/11 will be shown on 9/11, the show’s opening date. This is the first time this has happened within my control. The Associated Press had a show in 9/11/02 with one or two of my photographs and the BBC had something, too. It’s on my CV but I didn’t actively participate in their shows or even know about it until years later.

Do they work in the show? I think they do. Theres a series of scales happening in those images. There’s the scale of what was captured, the scale of what’s missing, the scale of time, and the scale of what we are doing to cope with what has happened. People have fled my shows in tears when they encounter these image.

9/11 is what we think of whenever something unexpected happens in the city, something loud like a manhole cover blowing up, a building collapsing, a plane flying low or a crane toppling. Its altered our consciousness to what was once a normalcy within the boundaries of a metropolis. I think NYers were hyper-terrorized by 9/11.

cacyforgenie.com

Categories: Manhattan, Photography