play it loud
A BUTCHER'S #4
Louder! - 1980s New York
I took this photo in 1983 on 9th St & Ave C. unaware that it was the ‘home’ to Harley Flanagan, founder of Cro-mags. He was really young, 14 or 15 and a hardcore terror. No electricity or water - they got what they needed from the hydrant. Most of the stairs had been taken out to discourage squatting.
Many years later in 2019, after posting my photos from the 80s on my site, I get an email from Harley, asking to include my pic in his book (Hard-Core: Life of my own). So there I was sitting at the book-signing table, ‘meeting and greeting’ - the book is a real eye-opener to a very different world!
It seems that my photos remind people of what it felt like in the Lower East Side / East Village back then. I’ve had them used as scene setters in the documentary film on Lydia Lunch directed by Beth B - Lydia Lunch- The war is never over . A recently released documentary on Harley Flanagan: Wired for chaos. I just went to the premier - it’s an incredible portrait of a wild kid growing up in a wild environment - the images and clips really are shocking (especially to think that we were living right there at the same time)
SWANS: Where Does a Body End? is a 2019 documentary film directed by Marco Porsia. The force that is Michael Gira! I took photos of them playing in one of their first gigs outside New York in ‘83, supporting The Birthday Party in Philadelphia. Loud.
I’m not on the stage here - just a minimal audience and the stage was about a foot high.
Probably one of the most amazing kid photo there is! Caught by Marcia Resnick at The Clash’s first NY appearance at the Palladium in 1979. As she tells it in the film, shooting backstage in the near dark she hadn’t even seen the young Harley ‘pop in’ until she developed the film.
postcard world
a conceptual approach
Italians always kept it minimal when it came to postcard writing - just ‘ciao’ and a name or collection of names. Reason? If you wrote more you were charged letter rate!
Postmarked from West Ossipee, NH in 1956 - This is the only postcard I have ever come across where the sender hasn’t written anything at all, not even a name. A skiing scene posted in July and the stamp is upside down - hmmm. I reckon this sender has a maverick mindset - excellent. (pure conjecture of course!)
"A picture is worth a thousand words" but what did Romaine make of it?
marginally festive
‘tis the season…
