Cover Story: Angela Boatwright X Godlis: Punk Now and Then
If coming of age means realising who you are, then the breakthrough can arrive at any time – no matter what stage you’re at. But wherever life takes us, wherever we end up, we all remain connected to the same point in our rearview mirrors: that wide-eyed teen just trying to figure shit out as best we can.
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Join us as we celebrate characters who know that better than anyone – from the teenage activists shaping our future to prodigious creatives who don’t believe in failure – and keep forging their own path regardless.
Dorothea Lange, Oakland, California, March 13, 1942. Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration.
Dorothea Lange, Centerville, California, May 9, 1942. Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration.
It has been said that history repeats itself – and if this is true it is because the majority of people are pragmatists. For them, life occurs through a lens of cognitive dissonance framed by confirmation bias. They seek reinforcement of opinion in place of truth, relying on other people to tell them what and how to think. They prefer the appearance of goodness over goodness itself, forgoing sacrifices that would require they take radical responsibility in the name of self reliance.
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As a result, mythological narratives become objects of faith and become rooted in identity, where integrity should be. Invariably, when push comes to shove, they shrug. It’s not their problem – until it is. And by then, they’ve passed the tipping point and it’s much too late.
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All of this could be avoided were people willing to acknowledge that myths are not truth, that historical fact consistently undermines the veracity of their sacred cows and renders them nothing more than illusions. Let us consider the idea that the United States is the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” as they claim in “The Star Spangled Banner” (the same song that explicitly endorsed the killing of slaves).
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Despite the rhetoric we know these words to be untrue, as proven time and again by the actions of the United States government. A pervasive prejudice exists, cowering in the shadows and consistently reasserting itself with abject violation of the Constitutional rights of this nation’s citizens. Consider Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, issued in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
What is it about punk that endlessly endures, uniting kids across space and time? Photographers Godlis and Angela Boatwright may have captured two distinct scenes – 1970s New York and contemporary Los Angeles – but in-between these images, made then and now, lies a single connecting thread.
I am thrilled to announce my feature on Guzman has been selected for the cover of the latest issue of Upstate Diary. The new issue features Terry Jones from i-D magazine, Laurie Simmons, Rockwell Kent, Eleanor Friedberger, Paul Rudolph, Victoria Sambunaris, Steven Holl, Duncan Hannah, Victoria Bartlett and more.
Endia Beal, Sabrina and Katrina, 2015, from “Am I What You’re Looking For?”, courtesy of the artist, from “All Power: Visual Legacies of the Black Panther Party,” PCNW 2018.
On October 15, 1966, Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton – two students at Laney College in Oakland, California – founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) to protect the citizens of their hometown from abuses of the state.
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Under the protection of the Second Amendment, they created armed citizens’ patrols to monitor an almost all white police force that regularly brutalised African Americans citizens with impunity. From their grassroots efforts, a nationwide movement was born – one that radicalised a new generation of youth to fight for their Constitutional rights.
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The BPP set up chapters in 68 cities in order to implement the Ten Point Platform and Program, which called for freedom, full employment, reparations, housing, education, military exemption, an end to police brutality and murder, freedom for the incarcerated, Constitutional rights during trial, and full self-determination.
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The leaders of the BPP had mastered the law, and knew exactly how to exact the rights granted by the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This – combined with their ability to build coalitions with other political groups including the Young Lords, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the American Indian Movement, and the Chicano Workers Movement – created a very real threat to the systemic racism that had kept these groups vulnerable, marginalised, and living under constant threat.
Back in 1978, while living in Oakland, photographer Ryan Weideman saw Midnight Express, a nerve-wracking film that tells the true story of Billy Hayes – a young American who, after being caught smuggling hashish, escapes from a Turkish jail and lives to tell the tale.
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“I thought, ‘If this guy can go through that, I am ready for New York!” Weideman says with a laugh.
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1970s Manhattan was an outlaw town riddled with violence and crime. It became a magnet for fearless spirits who lived life on their own terms. Although Weideman had taken visual cues from film noir throughout his life, it was the work of photographers William Klein, Diane Arbus, Joel Meyerowitz and Robert Frank that made him aware that something spectacular was happening in New York.
Angolan artist Keyezua’s dad passed away when she was young after being diagnosed with diabetes. As a result of the illness, both of his legs were amputated. Frustrated by the amount of imagery of disabilities that only show people suffering and weak, Keyezua worked with six disabled Angolan men to create a series of masks in which she channelled her trauma – captured in a striking series of images.
Punk rock might not exist if it hadn’t been for Danny Fields. Born in Queens, the legendary music magnate spent the 60s in the East Village, hanging with the likes of Andy Warhol and his superstars. He championed bands like the Velvet Underground while working as a radio host for WFMU, did publicity for the Doors and the Stooges, and by the 70s, was writing a hugely influential column for the Soho Weekly News. Fields is also the guy who discovered the Ramones.
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In 1975, the band begged Fields to hear them play at CBGB, and he was instantly enamored. The Ramones wanted Fields to write about them—but he did them one better and became their manager. He spent the next five years brokering record deals, arranging the band’s first video shoot, and booking their first tours, including a trip to England to play alongside the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and the Damned.
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But five years in, craving superstardom, the Ramones fired Fields and hired Phil Spector, the manager who notoriously pointed a gun at Johnny Ramone and demanded he play a riff repeatedly. But during his brief tenure, Fields meticulously documented the band’s rise, amassing an incredible archive of photos from the band’s early days. In 2016, Fields released a collection of them as a rare limited edition photo book. But now, My Ramones (Reel Art Press) is being republished and getting a wide release.
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VICE tracked Fields down recently to chat about what it was like managing the Ramones in their wildest years.
For American photographer Jocelyn Lee, the most exquisite depths of beauty can be found within the fundamental vulnerability of life itself. Here, within the strength and fragility of the physical world, Lee looks at the subjects of sexuality, family, aging and death to express the transitory feelings of joy and melancholia that are inherent to the ephemeral nature of existence.
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In The Appearance of Things, the artist’s first UK solo show at Huxley-Parlour Gallery, Lee uses portraiture, landscape and still life to explore the tactile qualities of the living world, juxtaposing foliage, fabric and flesh to capture the transitory beauty of a moment that arrives as quickly as it disappears. Here, Lee discusses how the cycle of birth, blossoming and death can be a source of glory, power and strength.
Keyezua, “Fortia” (2017). Giclée print on Hanhemühle paper 52 1/2h x 78 3/4w. Courtesy of Keyezua.
Grief is one of the most profound emotions we may experience in life, forcing us to reckon with a loss so powerful it can take years, even decades, to fully process. We may become consumed by feelings of denial, anger, bargaining, and depression in waves so strong it feels like they may never end – until our commitment to healing forces us to pull ourselves through, and we wash upon the shore of acceptance, battered, and bruised.
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But the story does not end there, for although grief has gone, something equal and opposite arises in its place: gratitude. Such is the power of love in its deepest sense, for it is love that allows us to change the way we think about and see the world – and ourselves.
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When Angolan-Dutch artist Keyezua lost her father as a young girl, her life was forever changed. Her father, suffering from diabetes, had both his legs amputated before he died. Growing up without a father, Keyezua began to question the disempowering beliefs that were damaging the image of her father that she held close to her heart. In Angola, it has been said that a man without legs is no longer a man – but Keyezua knew this to be false and set about to speak truth to power through the creation of art.
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In her new series, Fortia, which is included in the group exhibition Refraction: New Photography of African and Its Diaspora at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York (April 19 – June 2, 2018), Keyezua transforms the way we look at and think about the physical disability. Each photograph features a black woman in a red dress wearing a mask designed and created by a group of six Angolan men who, like Keyezua’s father, no longer had legs.
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Fortia, which is Latin for “strength” tells Keyezua’s story through a series of work that shares her experience in pieces titled “My Mother’s Womb,” “This is Not His Funeral, This is Life!” “Sailing Back to Africa as a Dutch Woman,” and “Womanhood – Sex, Love and Betrayal.” For Keyezua, the creation of art is a revolutionary act, a ritual for therapeutic self-expression that simultaneously changes the way we look at and think about disability.
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Below, Keyezua takes us through her journey to show how love can become a catalyst to empower, restore, and heal ourselves – and the world.
On April 20, 2011, two months into the Libyan Civil War, British photojournalist Tim Hetherington was on the front lines with rebel forces at Misrata when tragedy struck. Gaddafi forces blasted his group, killing photographer Chris Hondros and gravely wounding photographer Guy Martin. Hetherington was wounded by shrapnel and survived the attack, only to die later from excessive blood loss.
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Hetherington abhorred violence, but he took it upon himself to explore the subject of war on the front lines, alongside soldiers in Liberia, Afghanistan, and Libya. While embedded in Afghanistan on assignment for Vanity Fair (for which he won the 2007 World Press Photo of the Year), Hetherington came to understand war as a function of male sexuality.
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Hetherington had an epiphany, thanks to a photograph he called “The Garden of Eden,” which showed American soldiers picnicking in the country. He believed a primal yearning for conflict and the threat of imminent death allowed men the opportunity to openly express love for one another without doubt, fear, or judgment. He thought true depictions of masculinity couldn’t be found in heroic, dramatic, or otherwise artistic representations of war. It lay in casual snapshots of soldiers in their most intimate and vulnerable moments.
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Stephen Mayes was Hetherington’s longtime friend and colleague; he’s now the the Executive Director of the Tim Hetherington Trust. To commemorate the seventh anniversary of his death, VICE spoke with Mayes about how Hetherington changed the way we think about war. He also talked about his final conversation with Hetherington, in which the photographer shared how his time on the front lines changed his life.
