Read Her Exclusive Interview with CNN Here
Watch the Video of Aliaa Magda Elmahdy
Being Removed from Tahrir Square
Read Her Exclusive Interview with CNN Here
Watch the Video of Aliaa Magda Elmahdy
Being Removed from Tahrir Square
i’m always curious what brings people here ..
these are a few of my favorites ..
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Malcolm X * Harriet Jacobs * Bronx Concourse Robbery in 1987 * Red Sexy Toes * Jim Jocoy * Maripol * Sade * Bunny Wailer * J Dilla * Leigh Bowery Trojan * Sid Vicious * Girls Fight Club * Nat Finkelstein * Huey Newton * Alpha Male * oOo Love to Love You Baby * Eazy E * REVS * Martha Cooper * Rock Steady Park * Rhapsody in Blue * Urohobo Language You Are the Love of My Life * Pee Porn * Danny Lyon * Blade Graffiti * Tuna Tartar * 70s Fashion Men Super Fly * Norma Desmond * Salome * Candy Darling * Anton Perich * Flatbush Brooklyn * Eric Johnson * Bobby Seale * Joe Conzo * New York State of Mind * Errol Flynn * Champagne Breasts * Anya Phillips * Pedro Paricio * WeeGee Crime Scene Photos * Paris is Burning * Tough Wigger Coked Out * Ellen Jong * Tiger Heart * Morticia y Gomez * Christmas Blunts * Martin Eden * Fuck SCAF * Two of Swords * Images of Love * I Dreamt I Was Jogging * Elephant Texture * Black Israelite * Brooklyn 1980 * Delayed Gratification * Women Are Beautiful * Cherish the Day * Martha Graham * T La Rock * Lady Jumps Out of Empire State Building Lands on Car * Fat Guy With Afro in Speedo * Madonna Polaroid * Slava Mogutin * Tupac Thug Life Tattoo * Call Me…Choclate Dinosaur * Grand Concourse 1971 * April Flores * Dance Is the Hidden Language of the Soul * The Cover Girls * Stiletto Heels and Loose Morals * Park Jams South Bronx * Egypt Revolution Graffiti * Roads to Nowhere *
Suzhou, China, is one of Jianai Jenny Chen’s many hometowns, and the subject of a current series of photographs she has been taking, documenting a world that is unlike any I have ever seen. Combining the East and the West in an incredibly original way, Suzhou is a city near the Yangtzhe River on the central east coast of China, a half hour (very fast) train ride away from shanghai. It’s famous for it’s amazing gardens and pagodas and elaborate stoned bridges, silk commodities (and fried silk worms), pearl farms and markets and canals, deeming it the Venice of China. Besides the ancient town is a huge are of modern developments, full of malls, high rise buildings and hotels, restaurants and bars from around the world, and international schools and universities.I thank Miss Chen for sharing these incredible images with us.
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I first discovered Tetsugo Hyakutake’s photographs when curating the 2009 IPA Best of Show exhibition. His photographs of post-war industrial Japan were at once graphically arresting images of a landscape that was both familiar and alien, powerful and exhausting, brilliant and stressful. I am fortunate Tetsugo contacted me recently, to let me know about “Pathos”, an exhibition of the works at Alan Klotz Gallery, NY, now through October 30 as I had the chance to speak with him about his ideas about modern day Japan.
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Please talk about your ideas of “Pathos and Irony” as they pertain to power post-war Japan. What has been gained and what has been lost during this radical period of industrial and economic growth?
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The post-war Japanese nation believed that industrialization and economic growth was the only way to recovery from defeat, catch up with the West, and revive national confidence. Despite the loss of human lives, destruction of more than 60 cities, and a lack of raw materials, Japan became the second largest economy in the world in less than 30 years after the war ended. However, in the early 1990s, rising stock and real estate prices following industrialization caused the economic bubble to burst and since then the Japanese economy ceased growing, which is known as “Lost Decade”. I think the collapse of the economy and the “Lost Decade” have left little room to reflect upon and contemplate what was post-war development and what it means to be uniquely Japanese. By looking back on history, I want to bring light to the present.
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Although rapid economic growth was in a sense successful and made living standards rise materially, at the same time we sacrificed lot of things, such as beautiful landscapes, agriculture, human lives, and we also suffered from things such as air pollution and water contamination.
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I focus on the ironic duality of beauty and dehumanization inherent in industrialization. “Pathos and Irony” lies between them, and while there is no visual evidence of human life, the industrial structures cannot be stripped of the sense of humanity that surrounds them. These opposing values epitomize the paradox of society after industrialization. Also I give a tribute to those who toiled to make it possible for Japan to become an economic superpower after World War II. I strive to depict this “pathos” as well as other emotional complexities that go hand in hand with the advancement of modern society.
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Embedded in my images is also the investigation of “pathos” in relation to historical, social, and economic issues involving industrialization and urban development. By expressing feelings of isolation, loneliness, and emptiness that underlie this “development,” I seek to provoke the question of whether society is truly advancing through industrialization.
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Why did you decide to focus on documenting the industrialization of Japan?
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From the 1970’s to 1990’s, my father had been involved in the Japanese car industry as a car designer. When I was twenty years old, he died from cancer caused mainly by overworking. When I see industrial buildings in Japan or even in other countries, it always reminds me of my father. I still remember how hard he was working during my childhood. Japan obtained strong economic power by the development of industrials, however personally I sacrificed my father’s life. I wanted to express my complicated emotions through my photography to monumentalize his life. That was the beginning of this project. Afterwards I began to focus on post-war development led by industrialization.
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How do these images represent the aesthetic of contemporary Japanese culture, politics, and thought?
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I think contemporary Japanese culture is based on cultural traditions, embracing western culture, individual interpretations, and industrialization. I am not sure how these images represent the aesthetic of “contemporary” Japanese culture. I attempt to connect historical, economic, and social issues of post-war Japan with personal experiences and the voices of my generation by showing the photographs of industrial and urban structures as a symbol of contemporary Japanese culture. By doing so I am trying to forge my Japanese identity, which is what means to be Japanese in post-war Japanese society.
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My photographs visually depict how chaotically Japan was re-constructed after the war; in contrast they also show exquisiteness in the complex structures, and I think this duality of issues is one aspect of the aesthetic of contemporary Japanese culture.
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What do you see as the relationship between the beauty and dehumanization of industrialized Japan?
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There are dual issues of beauty and dehumanization in industrialization. In these photographs of industrial and urban structures, I emphasize its beauty by altering visual elements to accentuate the grief of industrialization. The more beautiful the photograph looks, the deeper the grief becomes. This concept of beauty originates one of the concepts of traditional Japanese culture such as “Wabi”. I have been looking for Japanese identity, so I embed the essence of Japanese aesthetics into my work.
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How have your photographs been received in Japan?
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I have not shown any of my work in Japan yet. But I will look forward to doing so. I did not choose the audience, but I would like to show my work to Japanese people and look forward to hearing their response.
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One day I contacted the executive of a certain shipbuilding firm to ask a permission to photograph their shipyard, explaining my theme and concept. He did not like the idea of pathos upon post-war development. He was in his mid 50’s, among a generation that achieved spectacular economic growth and experienced economic prosperity. I assume that he wants to believe the post-war development was absolutely right.
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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…
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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 ?
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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.
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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.
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Were these images you consciously sought out, or were they something, that over time, you realized were a collection unto themselves ?
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I don’t seek these images, I stumble upon them. If something is in progress I run towards it, I chase it.
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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!”
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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?
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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.
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I am particularly struck by the photo of the cab on fire. Please talk about what is happening in that image.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I have known Koe Rodriguez for the longest, but only recently discovered his treasure trove of graff history. I’ll let Koe get into it…
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How did you first get into graff? Did you write, or have you always been more of an aficionado?
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I got into Graff during the early 80s because Hip-Hop was in full effect and everybody was goin’ for theirs. My older cousin and his friends where into it, the media was giving it some exposure and I was personally blown away by it. I was into drawing at the time, so I gravitated towards the element of Hip-Hop that resonated with me the most. I started off like everyone else, a young toy, getting’ up with El Marko markers and Wet Look spray paint.
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By the mid-80s, I began trying my hand at painting. My name was originally “Coe,” but I later changed it to “Koe” after discovering there was a Coe in the Bronx. When it came to piecing, I enjoyed rockin’ the letter “K” much better than the letter “C” as well. As I was actively writing, I began documenting the art as well – this was in 1985 at the age of 15.
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Being a true Gemini and having that insatiable appetite to absorb knowledge, I was also consuming as much information as I could about Hip-Hop and Graffiti in general. This went on for many years and by the time I was in my 20 and 30s, cats were calling me a Hip-Hop encyclopedia and later a scholar. When I was filmed for the movie “Just For Kicks,” they actually gave me that “Hip-Hop Scholar” credit, I never requested it. I’m a pretty humble cat and rarely ride my own jock.
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When did you begin collecting materials on graff culture? Where has this path taken you?
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I began collecting graff related items dating back to the early 80s. Newspaper clippings came first and then books like Subway Art and Steven Hager’s Hip-Hop came next. My family was fortunate enough to cop a VCR around 1984 and I began recording anything I could on Hip-Hop culture, especially Graffiti. ABC (Channel 7) ran a few good specials on Hip-Hop early on like 20/20’s “Rappin’ To The Beat,” “The Big Break Contest,” “New York Hot Tracks” and a made for TV movie called “Dreams Don’t Die” featuring Graff by the late, great Dondi White. In the late 80s, I would cut my high school classes, jump on a Path Train and head to the original Soho Zat to boost IGT Magazines and Vaughn Bode comics.
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The 80s were a really special time for consuming all things Hip-Hop. I remember heading over to comic book hot spot Forbidden Planet to rack comics with my lil’ homie and Vulcan (who was working there) had the drop on us and told us to forget about boosting anything. It was actually pretty cool (and funny) being busted by a popular graff writer of the time. Vulcan was cool about the situation and after asking him what would be a good spot to photograph subway burners he put us on to a good spot uptown to bench and catch flicks. As for the path that collecting and being down with Hip-Hop in general has taken me, its allowed me to have a pretty nice career in Hip-Hop. Truthfully, I feel blessed to be doing what I’ve always loved doing, and getting paid for it. Life is a trip.
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Which piece is the pride of your collection and why?
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A: Wow – there’s just so many. lol I have vintage Krylon cans for colors that have been discontinued for quite some time. I have my collection of original graff magazines and books. I have thousands of graff related photos dating back to the 80s and more importantly, I have all the great memories. My collection of archives and paraphernalia isn’t exclusive to graff related items. I’ve collected pretty much anything that deals with Hip-Hop culture in general. My home office is a serious omage to the culture. My file cabinet is covered in Hip-Hop related stickers alone – anything from an original “OPP” sticker or Yo MTV trading cards to Hip-Hop apparel hang tags that I customized into magnets. I have some real conversation pieces.
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Having observed graff for three decades, what would you say is the most impressive thing about how the culture has developed during this time? What has been the most surprising?
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Graff culture never ceases to amaze me. Its essentially gone from a secret society of outlaw artists to an internationally recognized artform with a global contingency. It went from being eradicated below ground to blowing up something crazy above ground. I’m always impressed at how Graff’s evolution, be its style or its lifestyle has maintained immense resiliency, cleverness, inventiveness and steady progression. Graff writers are pop culture’s new rock stars. Guys like Lee and Cope 2 who were considered outlaws and their works considered urban blight, are global celebrity’s and bankable talent.
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Graff culture is unstoppable and it’s gonna continue to grow and radiate for many years to come. With corporations still eager to get in between the sheets with graff artists to promote or sell their products and/or services, more and more writers are seeing a reason to stick to their guns and take their craft to much higher levels. Hip-Hop is big business and rappers shouldn’t be the only ones prospering from it anymore; not when art is one of the most provocative, respected and lucrative mediums on the planet.
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You mention you have pen pal letters! What’s that all about?
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A: Back in the late 80s, myself and some of my graff friends like: Ket, Cole, Nic 1, Cavs, and John The Greek were communicating with other writers around the globe and engaging in photo trading, which was essentially swapping your graff photos for other writer’s photos – kinda like trading baseball cards. My foray into photo trading started off around 1987 after reaching out to West Coast graff magazine “Ghetto Art” (which later became “Spray Can Art”) and starting a friendship with the rag’s publishers, Charlie DTK and Tim “Power.” Charlie, who is now considered a West Coast graff legend, would send me dope graff flicks by him and hot LA writers and I would send him hot graff flicks from New York. We would always include a letter with all of our flicks to exchange information, gossip or to simply shoot the shit.
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Sometimes we would even send each other packages containing VHS and audio tapes of graff related stuff like “Style Wars” and Hip-Hop mix shows by Red Alert, Chuck Chillout and Mr. Magic. This is all pre-Internet and if you wanted to holler at anyone out of town or abroad, you sat down and wrote a letter or you hollered at them on the phone. Eventually, more cats started getting down with photo trading and the next thing you knew, I was writing cats from New York to Holland…it was crazy! I have a huge folder of all the original letters I ever received from the cats I wrote to dating back to the late 80s. Looking back, it’s bugged-out how committed we were to our craft.
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What are your plans for the collection?
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I recently took a bunch of my Hip-Hop collectibles to the Las Vegas apparel show “Magic.” I consult for the heritage Hip-Hop brand Sedgwick & Cedar and laced our booth with some of my vintage Hip-Hop pieces. I was instrumental in laying out the booth’s overall flavor and had some of my prize pieces like an old name buckle, vintage Krylon cans and markers and Cazal glasses in these hot trophy cases. The booth looked like a Hip-Hop museum and mad heads were drawn to it on the strength of its funky true school flavor. It worked well with baggin’ sales and it definitely let cats know that there were some real vets in the house. Some of my graff related collectibles are featured in a book that I began working on with my old shooting partner from Brooklyn, John The Greek.
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This book features some of our greatest NY Graff flicks from the late 80s to 1993. The book has a lot of shots of dope subway graff during its twilight on the New York subway system, which is significant in itself. It also features the “Foto Kingz,” the crew of graff writers who also documented graffiti culture for crazy years. That crew consisted of Cavs, Ket, Cole, John The Greek, Nic 1, Charlie DTK and later me. I’m hoping we really get a chance to publish the book as its content is not just culturally and historically significant, but just a hot slice of true Hip-Hop culture.
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MARTHA COOPER: DOWN BY LAW
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Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton
August 14–September 26, 2010
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Martha Cooper is a documentary photographer born in the 1940s in Baltimore, Maryland. She began photographing in nursery school after her father gave her a camera. She graduated from high school at the age of 16, and from Grinnell College with a degree in art at age 19. From 1963-65, she taught English as a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand and then journeyed by motorcycle from Bangkok to England where she received an ethnology diploma from Oxford. She was a photography intern at National Geographic Magazine in the 1960s, and worked as a staff photographer for the Narragansett Times in Rhode Island and at the New York Post in the 1940s.
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Martha is perhaps best known for documenting the New York graffiti scene of the late 1970s and early 80s. While working for the New York Post she began taking photos of creative play on the Lower Eastside in order to use up the remaining film in her camera each day before developing it. One day she met a young boy named Edwin who showed her his drawings and explained that he was practicing to write his nickname on walls. Edwin offered to introduce her to a graffiti king. This is how she met the great stylemaster, Dondi, who eventually allowed her to photograph him in the yards at night while he was painting. In 1984, with Henry Chalfant, she published Subway Art, a landmark photo book that subsequently spread graffiti art around the world.
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In addition to publishing more than a dozen books, Martha’s photographs have appeared in innumerable magazines including National Geographic, Smithsonian and Vibe. She is the Director of Photography at City Lore, the New York Center for Urban Folk Culture. She still lives in Manhattan but is currently working on a photo project in Sowebo, a Southwest Baltimore neighborhood.
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Cooper will be exhibiting four silver gelatin prints from her early b-boy documentary work in “Down by Law” at the Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton, opening on August 14, 2010. She has graciously agreed to speak about her work here.
New York in the 1970s and 1980s was a city bursting with originality, innovation, and experimentation. Please talk about how you see the relationship between your early work as a photographer and the environment in which it took hold.
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I’ve long been drawn to anything made by hand perhaps because my parents always encouraged creative play. In 1977 I began working as a staff photographer for the New York Post and the job required that we cruise around the city all day in our cars with two-way radio contact to the news desk in case there was a breaking assignment. When not on assignment we were supposed to look for feature “weather” photos. My favorite neighborhood for photos was Alphabet City on the Lower Eastside where I could almost always find kids making something from nothing.
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It has recently been suggested to me that the term “graffiti” is marginalizing, and loaded with negative connotations. How do you feel about the use of the word in general, as well as application to your work?
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Writers probably enjoy being associated with “negative connotations”. Being bad can be cool. Of course the term graffiti has been around much longer than markers and spray paint. In NYC, it’s most fitting for tags but less appropriate for sophisticated spray painted walls. Words and their connotations change over time. Just let me know what you want me to call it and I’ll be happy to oblige. If you prefer the term aerosol art, I’ll go with that stilted though it may be.
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As a working photographer over the past three decades, you have seen first hand how the art world—from galleries and dealers to museums and collectors—responds and reacts to contemporary American art. What are your thoughts on the differences (and similarities, if applicable) between the US, European, and Asian markets?
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As a documentary photographer I’ve always been more interested in publishing my photos in books and magazines than showing them in galleries. I never paid much attention to the art market until very recently. Collectors in Europe and Japan seem more eager to collect “graffiti” (should I say aerosol?) related work. I’m just happy that people anywhere enjoy looking at my pictures.
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Who are your artistic inspirations, and how have they influenced your ideas, aesthetics, and actions through the course of your career?
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My dad was an amateur photographer and he used to take me on “camera runs” with the Baltimore Camera Club so my first experience with photography was just going out looking for pictures and that’s still my approach today…
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I’m from a generation of street photographers who never studied photography. I grew up seeing photojournalism magazines like Look and Life and National Geographic and wanted to become a professional photographer so that I could travel the world. I was always more interested in thinking about what I wanted to photograph than how I was going to shoot it. It was never my intention to make art.
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For “Down by Law” you will be exhibiting your silver gelatin prints of Rock Steady Crew members Frosty Freeze, Ken Swift, Crazy Legs, and Doze Green . Please talk about your work documenting the b-boy movement, and the way in which these photographs—in particular that of Frosty—have become historic markers of the culture.
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I first encountered b-boys by chance in 1980 in Washington Heights and was so impressed that I contacted Sally Banes, a dance writer, to help me document them. It took us a year before we had enough material to publish a story. We asked Henry Chalfant to help us find dancers. He was organizing an event with graffiti, rapping and DJing and thought dance would be a great addition. Through his graffiti contacts, we met Crazy Legs.
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The resulting story in the Village Voice in April 1981 with Frosty Freeze on the cover introduced breaking and Rock Steady to the world. Because NYC is a media town, magazines and film crews quickly covered the “new” dance. Henry filmed them for his movie Style Wars as did Charlie Ahearn for Wild Style. The words “Hip Hop” were not in general use at the time but as people became more aware of the culture, breaking was included as an integral part and the Rock Steady Crew became worldwide celebrities. As far as I know my photos are the earliest documentation of b-boying.
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There has been a wide array of artists to emerge from the early graffiti and Hip-Hop movement. How have your earlier experiences documenting b-boys, young writers in the yards, and trains running along the lines influenced you ideas about art, and in what direction would you like to go?
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I don’t think a lot about art. Still photography is a wonderful way to document. In a fraction of a second the camera can capture and preserve a million details. I’m interested in using photography for historic preservation. I want people to look at my photos and get a sense of what life was like at a specific time and place.
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I’ve seen New York City change radically over the past 30 years and my photos are appreciated because they are a record of a different time. For the past 4 1/2 years I’ve been documenting a difficult neighborhood in Baltimore with a vibrant street life. My hope is that in thirty years these photos will similarly be enjoyed.
There’s so much I could say about Anton Perich, but it’s altogether too much for me to try to put it into words. I’ll leave it to the incomparable Mr. Perich to do this better than I ever could.
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Your life history is fascinating! Please talk about your work running an underground film program in Paris in the late 1960s.
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AP: Thank you. I was making some super 8 movies then. All lost now, except one, “Le retour d’ Eurydice”, in which I was starring. Raphael Bassan directed it. An early French underground film, recently screened at Beaubourg. This was 16mm production, and well preserved.
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Anyway, there was this wonderful villa with gardens on Boulevard Raspail, just a few short blocks from La Coupolle. It was housing the old American Center, a complex of art studios and various music and theater activities. Later they tore it down to put the Carier skyscraper. I saw there many international productions and created a few. But one thing was missing, underground films. So I proposed to show films there one night weekly, in a small studio in the basement, and sometimes in the gardens, on the grass. It was a success. I was making films and my friends were making films and there was no place to show them regularly in Paris.
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Of course, we were all spoiled by La Cinematheque, spending days there watching classics and contemporary films. But there was no room there for our “little short marginal works”. And of course, revolutions are always made by the marginals.
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In the Sixties, the New York Underground cinema were well defined by Warhol, Mekas, Jack Smith, Brackage and others. A whole different scenario was happening in Paris. There was Godard and his gods reigning on the Parnassus, making a wonderful narrative movies, not much questioning Cinema itself. There was also Garell, Clemanti, And there was Etienne O’Leary and Michel Auder. The great Michel Auder, who questioned everything. In 1970 he abandoned film totally and converted to video. I screened his films there the very first night, and often afterwards. He supplied the projector that he somehow inherited from the French Army, I guess he knew de Gaulle, or was his nephew. Another great French underground filmmaker was Raphael Bassan. But the real revolution in Paris film world were maid in the Fifties by the last great god of the avant-garde, Isidore Isou and his prophet Maurice Lemaitre. In the early Fifties they made movies with the found footage, various acids and paints. They made the cinema discrepant, totally separating the sound track from the visual content, as if telling two different stories in the same time. Of course, most of the audience walked out. No one ever did it before. Debord took it all from them. Debord was Lettrist before he became Situationist.
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Anyway, I screened some of those films too.
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I was associated with Lettristes from 1967 to 1970. I worked with Lemaitre and Isou, painting, writing poetry, shooting films, doing the shows. Lettrism was my school. I was educated by the two greatest artists and thinkers of that time. Of course Isou predicted the 1968 revolution and went mad. We did some performances at L’Odeon, it was occupied, Non-stop 24 hours spectacle. I spent few nights there.
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I think that the Revolution of 68, the Paris Spring is grossly misunderstood today. It was not the flesh and blood revolution, no guillotines. It was the revolution of spirit, of the young, so unique in the history of revolutions. It paved the way for other bloodless revolution in the Eastern Europe. Imagine, the Communism died the bloodless death. Tell it to Stalin, or Lenin.
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I lived my own revolution there. I became something else at 23. It is difficult to transform oneself, only fantasy and revolution will do it. And spirit. And resurrection. And the fire in Paris streets. And “sous les paves la plage”. The greatest slogan ever written.
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To get back to films, I did show some Warhol films, and Mekas.
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The legendary Pierro Heliczer came from New York and introduced his films. Taka IImura came there with his films as well, and many other underground filmmakers, French and international.
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Why did you decide to come to New York in the 1970s? What was the city like back then, particularly for artists and radicals?
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AP: I came to New York in 1970. At that time I was interested in many things that were coming from New York. Underground films. Pop Art. Experimental theater. Warhol’s Factory. Jonas Mekas. Julian Beck. John Cage. John Chamberlain. Minimal Art. Earth Works. All of that new, foreign to the Europeans, miraculous and fascinating. It was all so American. Paris didn’t have any of that. It had a vacuum and suffocating atmosphere. They were mourning the revolution of 68 instead celebrating it.
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In NY it was all celebration, non stop celebration of the young, creative and the free. Woodstock was a celebration. Max’s Kansas City was celebration. Punk was celebration, music, fashion and attitude. NY Dolls was celebration. Transvestites were celebration. Taylor Mead was celebration, Warhol, Factory, Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis, Wayne County, Andrea Feldman, John Waters, John Chamberlain, John Cage. Lou Reed. Forest Myers was celebration. His SOHO wall was much better than that other wall in Berlin. And it is there forever in the full glory. Smithson and Heiser were doing God’s work, transforming the landscapes in the great vacuums of America.
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In 1973, you produced the first underground TV show which ran on Manhattan public access television. Please talk about your ideas about video art and how you made use of public access TV to explore them.
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AP: I quit film and was shooting video. I realized that it was the gun of the future. I realized that the freedom to bear video was the same as the freedom to bear arms. And with a such powerful instrument you dream of changing the world. You dream revolution. You remember I came to NY via Paris and brought a symbolic cobble stone with me, you remember: “under the cobble stones the beach…”Other so called video artists were showing their videos at the galleries and museums, the most safe places in the world. I never had a video show in a gallery or museum. I would be ashamed of it. Such bourgeois establishments. Suffocating the freedoms that video was to bring.
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I saw the video camera as the most subversive weapon on the world, and you don’t take it to the gallery, you take it to the American TV. There was Cronkite there and Barbara Walters, but you replace them with Taylor Mead, Danny Fields and Susan Blond. Naked aggressive and radical, hating everything the TV had to offer until that day. I did it on Public Access in January 1973, in the prehistoric times of video. I took my one hour weekly show “Anton Perich Presents” there.
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I realized then that the free Public Access was like youtube today. As the matter of fact, like the Internet today. No one realized that it was so powerful, radical and transformative. TV was the last stronghold of American comfort and the superficial perfection. Clean as the soap commercials. But while the soap washed clothes, the TV bleached the brains. The absolute pristine color TV meets the badly produced black and white airings, badly filmed and with bad sound, badly dressed and badly behaved stars of the underground. The Television has never seen this content before. It was the first. Yes, I broke the ice. After me came the flood. Look at the cable today. Yes we made a revolution, single handedly. It was about freedom.
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Please talk about the inspiration to start NIGHT Magazine in 1978. Why did you decide to get into publishing, and what was it like to produce print back in the days?
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AP: Yes, it was all about inspiration. It was about poetry of the photograph. NIGHT was this wonderful title idea for a new, oversized underground publication. I designed it and published it. Absolutely oversized, glamorous, elegant, sensual on a smooth almost a bed sheet-size beautiful white paper. It was in 1978. I was at the Studio 54 shooting every night fabulous pictures of the most fabulous people in the World. For me photography is an obsession, the white substance.
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I was shooting for the Warhol’s Interview magazine and for me that was not enough, so I had to self-publish, as it is called today. Well, it was marvelous to capture all this nightly energy on the pages of NIGHT. Hundreds, thousands of photos. From Victor Hugo to Patty Hansen and Jerry Hall. Bianca, Esme, Carole Bouquet. All dressed on the covers of VOGUE and topless in NIGHT.
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I wanted to publish every photo I ever took. It was the Facebook for the Studio 54 regulars. But my photography here is something else. It is celebrated now, looking so fresh and contemporary, as if it was taken today. All great photography is timeless, looks like taken today, and not yesterday. The dated photographs don’t speak to me, cannot establish a communication with them. It is like yesterday’s papers. The paparazzi work. NIGHT is not a yesterday’s paper. It told the future over 30 years ago.
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I still publish NIGHT today. It is my way of questioning the Internet. If we don’t question it and if we don’t doubt it we will end up in the near future having everything on our fingertips and nothing in our arms. NIGHT is not on your fingertips, it is in our arms, big beautiful, physical, not virtual. Hand-made, and not LED device.
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Throughout this time you were also taking photographs of everyone on the scene, from Andy Warhol, Candy Darling, and Jean-Michel Basquiat to Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethrope, and Tennessee Williams. What was it like to photograph celebrities and personalities at that time?
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AP: I didn’t photograph much celebrities, they were mostly tourists. At Studio 54 and Max’s. Truman was a regular, Bianca was a regular. I took only 2 photos of Basquiqt, one published on the first page and the other on the last page of his giant Milano catalogue. I photographed Andy for the only one reason, to capture his shyness. I photographed Candy endlessly just to capture the tranquility of her eyes. I photographed Mapplethorpe to capture l’enfant terrible. I photographed Patti Smith to capture Rimbaud or perhaps to capture the rainbow in the darkest corners of Max’s.
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A couple of years ago, Carlo McCormick introduced me to Ruby Ray, understanding that she and I were destined to connect as her photographs of punk as it first exploded on the West Coast are unlike anything else out there. A regular contributor to Search & Destroy, Ruby Ray’s work defined a look and a vibe that has long since gone by. What remains are her photographs, which continue to evoke and inspire a do-it-yourself ethos that is more relevant than ever. I thank Ruby Ray for chatting about her work.
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Please talk about the punk scene when it was coming up on the West coast in the 70s.
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There was just an explosion of energy and so many great bands and shows up and down the whole coast. And a good number of NYC and UK bands came out here. We were playing a postindustrial game and had already decided that we were the winners! It was an awakening to all the lies – we weren’t caught in the matrix! SF was so cool because it was a small city with plenty of spaces and cheap rent. Anyone with guts could put on a show or start a band.
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Please talk about your work for Search & Destroy magazine. What was it like to be a part of underground publishing?
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We published S&D on newsprint and laid out all the pages by hand using miniscule typewritten pages and rubber cement. The text was usually Xeroxed several times in case the glue rubbed the type off! We had these giant flats that we had to carefully place and glue all the text and photos on, like a giant collage. Cartoonists came in and volunteered hand draw logos or headlines. What should it look like, what would punk visuals consist of? These were things influencing us subconsciously; we made it up as we went along. We had books all over for ideas –situationists, punk from other places, Russian constructivists, surrealists. The hippie paper the Oracle was an inspiration, too. Layout sessions happened on tables and the floor of our apartment with everyone helping out. It was a lot of work, but invigorating! We all felt very alive and part of something important. I learned so much and met so many great people! We tried to push the limits…
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Do you see any connection between the DIY ethos of that era and today’s move trends digital self-publishing and promotions?
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Totally, and it’s funny you ask me that because I have only just become involved with a cartoonist/games creator in developing a worldwide, online artist gallery and self-publishing website that hasn’t launched yet. I’m planning to publish my book Punk Passage there this fall in a print-on-demand edition and other formats. This method gives me so much freedom to publish the book just as I want it. It’s the future of new media and power to the people publishing. With billions of people in the digital landscape, there is always an audience for talent. Zeitgeist of the times impels us to find new forms. We have got to find different ways for artists to survive and thrive by their works.
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How did it feel to be documenting a brand new scene and subculture? What was it like seeing your work in print as things were happening?
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It was fabulous and exciting! I am a person who learns by doing and punk was my art school! It challenged me to become a better photographer and allowed me free use of my creativity to come up with whatever I wanted. It was a wonderful time of experimentation. And it gave me a forum which is what any artist wants. It’s fun to collaborate. We didn’t have to be worried about sales or whether the advertisers liked what we produced, we just put it out there.
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How did your photographs influence and connect to a broader audience?
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Well, for a while, I thought I was doomed to obscurity! But my big punk exhibit at the SF library in 2009 showed me differently. Almost 10,000 people came to the exhibit and granted, punk is a big draw. But I found a growing number of people had who claimed inspiration from my work, and that was very gratifying. My recent punk exhibit in LA took my work to yet another level. Sometimes, you have just got to hang in there… It may be awhile before those fans accept my new images.
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Who were your favorite subjects to photograph?
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Penelope of the Avengers was so photogenic and very easy to work with. Everyone was in love with her back then. The Mutants were so much fun, everything they did and said was instant art! I adored meeting and photographing John Cooper Clarke in London. It was always a different experience – at the clubs you had to be surreptitious because “punks” were not into posing per se. I always tried to think of everyone as my peer so I wouldn’t become intimidated. I had to make it interesting for them too.
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What is the story behind the William Burroughs photograph?
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When Search & Destroy stopped publishing, we started RE/Search and were putting out a magabook on Burroughs and his work. He was glad to oblige the photographer because he knew we would do a great book on him. I was a nervous wreck and only had about 10 minutes to shoot him and I had to make do with the location where he was attending a party. We brought the guns that were the props and I choose the garden to contrast the guns with. I kept praying the whole time that the film was exposed properly, and prayed again when I had to develop it. It wasn’t like with digital cameras where every photo comes out perfectly exposed; you really have to think when using film and natural light. Bill was at ease with me and I love the way the pictures came out. I am still shooting film, by the way!