It's impossible to imagine a time when the United States and Russia were strong allies. Since the rise of the Soviet Union more than 100 years ago, the relationship between the US and Russia has been fraught, to say the least.
But in the 19th century, Russia was America's best friend in the world.
Both countries, both great continent-spanning collosuses, were at odds with the then-greatest power in the world: Great Britain. Britain, still smarting from the loss of the America, wanted to kneecap the young republic by supporting the Confederacy in the Civil War. In fact, most of Western Europe at the time wanted to support the South -- they wanted access to Southern markets, particularly its cotton, and, like Britain, the other European powers wanted to keep America divided and weak.
Not Russia.
Russia wanted to check the Western European neighbors by keeping America strong. So in 1863, as the Civil War raged, and to prevent the Confederate Navy from attacking Union ports, sent its Atlantic Squadron to New York Harbor. They were welcomed as friends, Russian sailors were the toast of the town, the bond between the two great nations deep and strong.
So strong, believe it or not, that when President Lincoln was killed the next year, the Russian Tsar Alexander II made all of the empire mourn. Lincoln and the Tsar, though they never met, had a lengthy correspondence and both were liberators of their people (Lincoln, the slaves, the Tsar, the serfs). And then, in 1867, the US and Russia did a little real estate -- the Russian sale of Alaska to the US. Oh, and Russia had a naval base in California.
That's how close the two countries were. And then, in the 20th century, it all fell apart.
But at least in 1863, when the Russian navy hit NYC, there was nothing by bonhomie.
I've written extensively about the book and movie Slaves of New York over the years. The book by Tama Janowitz came out in 1986 and the movie version in 1989.
If you want to find the complete Mr NYC Slaves of New York archive, go here.
And even though I can't find a full version of the movie available anywhere, you can watch the end credits, with wonderful shots of late 1980s downtown Manhattan -- a place both very familiar and quite distant.
End credits for movies usually aren't that interesting but I suggest you read these for a few reasons:
1) The cast inludes, in minor roles, actors who would go on to big careers: Steve Buscemi, Stanley Tucci, Mercedes Ruehl, and Anthony LaPaglia. It's odd to see them next to people who ... wouldn't go on to big careers.
2) At the end of the credits, they thank Mayor Ed Koch -- and this movie came out just a few short months before he was bounced out of office.
3) You will notice that two future Mr NYC interviewees are in these credits: Tama Janowitz herself and Barbara Nitke who served as an on-set photographer.
Enjoy! Watch these credits, go into the archive, and revisit the world of bohemian NYC!
The New York Times has recently published a list of 25 novels set in NYC, published within the last 100 years, where the city is more than just a backdrop or even a "character" in the story -- it is the story, NYC is intertwined with the plot.
These are books that, simply put, couldn't have taken place anywhere else.
Believe it or not, some big titles are missing -- no Gatsby, nothing by Edith Wharton. Sadly Slaves of New York was not included either but the author, Tama Janowitz (a previous Mr NYC interviewee) was mentioned (with a photo) since her 1980s Brat Pack colleagues Jay McInery's 1984 novel Bright Lights, Big City was included (my review of the movie version of it can be found here).
This list is very interesting, and it includes commentary by the various critics who chose the titles. Lists like this are inherently flawed and infuriating, but at least they remind you that there are lots of good books about NYC that you should put on your shelf -- or load onto your Kindle.
One big inclusion is Don DeLillo's 1997 masterpiece Underworld. That is a great NYC novel but so much more -- its an epic sweep of an Everyman living through the second half of the 20th century while history unfolds around him and occasionally touches him. For me, it's not just a novel, or a great novel, or a great NYC novel -- it's a state of mind, a raising of consciousness, a story that makes you look at the world and history differently. I'm glad to see it on this list but Underworld is sui generis, like all great work. The same way that NYC is a city bigger than its population and its borders, Underworld extends beyond the story on its pages.
If you love movies, love NYC, and really love movies set in NYC, then you'll want to listen to this special episode of Marc Maron's WTF podcast with film historian Jason Bailey.
Recorded live at the Paris movie theater -- the last single-movie house in all of Manhattan (maybe the whole city) -- Marc and Jason discuss the history of American film as it relates to NYC and why the city is always a great backdrop to just about any film set in it.
Most of all, Bailey makes a point how any NYC movie is two things -- a story about people in NYC as well as a document about the city at that time.
You can back and look at movie set in NYC in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s and see how different the city was back then. Movies like Midnight Cowboy (1969), Taxi Driver (1976) and Slaves of New York (1989) really capture what the city was like at the moment they were made, the gritty reality of a different time. But go back even further, to King Kong in 1933, when the massive ape takes hold of the Empire State Building, burnishing the building into cinema history. What's important to remember is that, in 1933, the Empire State Building was brand new, more of a curiosity than an iconic image at the time.
Movie change, NYC change, but NYC and the movies is marriage that will last forever.
New York City has, on occassion, been a literal battlefield.
Much of the Revolutionary War was fought here, and you can find remnants of it around the five boroughs if you know where to look. More than 200 years later, the 9/11 attacks on NYC (and DC) began the two-decade "war on terror" that we live with to this day. Those two very different wars in NYC, at two hugely different times, are etched clearly into history for a clear reason -- the first was a great victory by a scrappy collection of colonies against its Imperial masters, the second an attack against a global superpower, challenging its dominance.
In both cases, the battlefield of NYC represented the heroic spirit and power of the whole country.
But there were other wars fought in the city that are largely forgotten today. These wars also tell the American story but in a dark way. And they are battles that roil the city and country to this day -- race relations and immigration.
In 1741, more than 30 years before the first shots of the Revolutionary War, a series of fires broke out around NYC. Still a British colony, the city was suffering economically, and slaves and poor whites were hit especially hard. These fires led the white citizens to believe that the slaves were behind them, as part of a conspiracy to violently riot and overturn the city's power structure, stealing all of the white people's property and wealth in the process. Paranoia reigned. The result was that 200 hundred slaves (and a few whites) were rounded up, arrested, put on trial, and then burned at the stake (a few were also deported to Canada and the West Indies). Known today at the New York Conspiracy of 1741, it was an ugly race war, based on lies and conspiracy, that exacerbated the racial divisions for centuries to come.
Then, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, are the Tong Wars. Rival Chinese immigrant gangs, or Tongs, fought viscious and bloody battles in the streets and alleys of Chinatown, jockeying for dominance in the neighborhood and city's criminal underground of opium dens, prostitution, and gambling. Some of the fights involved meat cleavers, hatchets, and torture, and implicated not only gang members but also crooked cops and politicians. There were Tong Wars in other American cities (most notably in San Francisco) but the history of the Tong Wars in NYC is especially fascinating -- and you can read more about it here.
Some wars are remembered because they make us feel heroic but these forgotten wars of NYC need to be remembered as well -- to tell us where we came from and where we are today.
New York City in the 1970s and ’80s has become almost mythical -- like Paris in the 1920s or London in the 1960s. It was an era of great danger and temptation as well as a period of artistic revolution.
Andy Warhol, Jean Michel-Basquiat, Julian Schnable, and others ruled the art world; Saturday Night Live and David Letterman were changing television comedy from the NBC Studios at Rockefeller Center; on Broadway, shows like Pippin, Evita, A Chorus Line, Cats, Lez Miz and the musicals of Stephen Sondheim were reinventing the American musical; Woody Allen was making classic films like Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah & Her Sisters, and Crimes and Misdemeanors; Studio 54 and disco culture captured the popular imagination; sex clubs like Plato’s Retreat and Hellfire were turning respectable middle-class couples into sexual adventurers; and the adult film scene in NYC still existed.
Lynn Paula Russell was part of it.
Here Lynn tells us about her adventures with the Broadway theater and sexual underworld of NYC, and how her experiences in in the city changed her life.
You're an Englishwoman and, I assume, lived and worked in the UK most of your life. But you worked in NYC several times in the 1970s and 1980s. Tell us about your time as a children's theater actress in NYC in 1970 and as a painter of Broadway theater performers in 1979. What was it like, as an Englishwoman, to come to this big wild American city at such a crazy time in history? What do you remember most about the city back then?
Yes, let’s talk about NYC! My first visit in 1970 was really only a flying visit. As I mentioned earlier, I was part of a small troupe of actors who had been touring around England visiting schools and youth clubs. This group was part of a children’s theatre company that consisted of several groups so it was extremely exciting that ours was chosen for the first tour of the USA. And to add to this, it had been decided that the most economical way of transporting us, with all our props and costumes, was on the magnificent, newly built QE 2 liner. The fact that we travelled this way meant that I had one of the most memorable experiences of my young life, which has remained with me to this day. Sailing in to NYC past the famous Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty, I felt as if I were in a movie.
On that day in October 1970, the sky was unbelievably clear as the ship majestically made its way up the Hudson, sailing close to the West side of Manhattan. I had never seen such buildings before, and at that time the Twin Towers of World Trade Centre were just nearing completion. I couldn’t believe it! The height of it terrified me. It seemed to belong to another planet. We could even see the little figures walking around on scaffolding at the top. I felt dizzy just looking. That human beings could not only dream of creating such a building, but actually have the courage and skill to accomplish it, struck me as the big difference between my culture and the American way. Back home, everything was so much smaller and more tentative at that time. Whenever an ambitious idea was suggested, there would always be a hundred reasons why it couldn’t be done, whereas here in America, people would always find a way!
In 1979, I came with my partner to spend 2 months exploring and doing some painting. I had originally been encouraged to come by Martin Charnin, the director of Annie and through my connections with the production I was able to go backstage at the Alvin Theatre [now the Neil Simon Theater] where it was still playing. You asked about my observations of the city – well, here I have to say that there was a disappointment regarding the ‘Great White Way’ as portrayed in Hollywood movies. When we finally got to see it, it wasn’t very white at all! And when I was shown the slightly antiquated backstage equipment at the Alvin, I was amazed – compared to the lighting board I had operated for Annie, the American version looked utterly primitive!
But apart from this, we loved the city, it’s good humor, and the fact that everyone working in the service industry treated you to a broad smile and a sardonic quip. They were all entertainers! We had heard so many stories about NY being dangerous. There were dire warnings about going into Central Park after a certain hour, but nothing ever happened to us and we ignored the doom mongers.
How had the city changed, in your experience, between the 1970s and 1980s?
Not easy for me to compare experiences of the city because in the 80s I was seeing a completely different side of it. In the earlier visit, we explored 42nd Street and marveled at its lights and adult movie houses, but in the 80s I remember actually going into one of them to meet Henri Pachard, who had his office in the backstage area. It was a curious experience. Back then 42nd Street was still alive with those same cinemas, but had I visited in the next decade, most of them would have vanished.
Interesting that London’s so called ‘Red Light’ district, Soho, began to be ‘cleaned up’ at about the same time. If you go to Soho now you won’t see a single strip joint, sex shop or prostitute. All consigned to the past. But back in 80s NYC, it was all still very much alive on the legendary 42nd Street. Also alive and flourishing, in another part of the city, were the offices of Screw magazine, which I visited on several occasions and met the editorial team. During the last of my visits I did a couple of illustrations for High Society and was able to glimpse the inside of a plush office on 5th Avenue. This was a much more up-market publication.
Now I am remembering visiting Plato’s Retreat – a large night club, designed especially for swingers. We had nowhere like this in London. I remember being invited to be part of a little cabaret there, but have to say that during the day, when we were rehearsing, and the interior was not seen in sexy subdued artificial light, it looked decidedly run down. The man who had started it, Larry Levinson, had just come out of prison so probably in his absence, the vitality had begun to drain out of the place.
Does anyone remember Plato’s Retreat now?
Oh, people remember it -- and miss it!
Before I leave this subject, I must also mention The Hellfire Club. In this case, being run down was quite deliberate. This place specialized in being dark, grubby and un-salubrious. I was invited to go there by a couple who were fascinated by the S/M scene and knew that I had an interest at the time too. They collected me from my hotel in a huge stretch limo, in which champagne was served as we made our stately way to the Club. When the chauffeur drew up at a shabby address in the Meatpacking District, I was utterly horrified, and even more horrified by the club itself. But I was there to experience it, so experienced it I did – having got myself decked out in a skimpy leather outfit specially for the occasion. I was led around the dark dungeons on a lead, and we were able to watch all the other slaves with their masters and mistresses.
Apart from these outings, most of the time we were filming and I saw plenty of interiors of huge loft apartments in the city or beautiful houses with swimming pools out on Long Island. However, to sum up, I have to say that being in NYC filled me with such a special sort of energy. I cannot begin to express the difference it made to my personality. I became more confident and more extrovert as a person.
In the final part of our interview, Lynn tells about her time in the NYC adult film world at the end of its Golden Age and what she learned from it.
You can visit Lynn Paul Russell’s website and an exhibition of her work at:
- Glenn Frey's 1985 video for his song "You Belong to the City", a sexy and gauzy dreamscape of NYC at night (never mind the screenshots of Miami Vice, it was because this song appeared in the then-hit show).
- An odd commercial starring our favorite NYC DJ Allison Steele who makes me want to go back in time and buy the stereo she's selling.
- And, finally, a behind the scenes look at the making of the 1989 movie Slaves of New York. You can also find a longer look at creation of this clasic NYC flick the here.
If you’ve read this blog long enough you know how much I love the work of Tama Janowitz, the author of Slaves of New York and other New York novels. Her writing is funny, quirky, and brutally honest. She explores the loves, lusts, ambitions, and anxieties of people striving to be successful and happy – and how it’s almost impossible to be either in this super-competitive world.
Tama has been publishing books for over thirty years, a literary survivor.
Describing herself as a “depressed person who laughs a lot”, she has lived an amazing life. Tama was kind enough to tell Mr NYC readers about her life’s journey, her work, her writing process, her memories of NYC in the 1980s, what it was like to know Andy Warhol -- and about the future.
Very briefly, who is Tama Janowitz and where did she come from? What made you choose a crazy career like writing -- or did it choose you?
I wanted to be a painter but my mom was single, unemployed (for the most part) and we lived very, very marginally. Paints/materials cost money. You could write with a pencil and paper (although in my case I had a manual typewriter!). I just was very determined and even in high school I wrote and wrote and wrote. Plus, me and my mom were huge readers, we read avidly, all the time, we discussed everything we passed back and forth. We got books at the drugstore with the covers ripped off, they cost a quarter; we went to the library every week. Reading to me was being allowed to visit another planet; to enter into someone else's head. If you are reading something you are absorbed by, you are THERE, and then you put down the book and you are NOT there, you are back in the world, but as soon as you pick up that book again you are right back teleported onto that other planet, other time, other people. The actual writing was far harder than I imagined. My mother was very encouraging. She never said, 'You are great!' she just said, 'Good work, keep going, I am enjoying this.' She was never shocked by anything I wrote, just supportive and encouraging. Painting for me was fun; writing was work, but I expect that had I continued to paint as a 'career' or 'life path' it would have eventually turned into 'work'. My mother told me, 'You don't wait to be 'inspired,' you just put words down on paper and when you have enough pages, you can start revising, which is where the work really begins.
You became famous for Slaves of New York in 1986 -- a book about struggling artists and hangers-on in early 1980s Manhattan. Did you still feel like a struggling artist when you wrote it, and even after you became successful? Does a professional writer always need to feel like he or she is struggling in order to stay good?
Oh I don't know. I never made much money from the whole thing, I always say had I started at McDonald's I would now have made more, plus I might be a manager or own my own franchise AND have health insurance. I know rich people who are writers, or look at Edith Wharton! She not only never struggled financially, she never -- apparently -- struggled with getting words on paper, and she is a great writer! Or, William Styron, he struggled with depression but he was married to a wealthy heiress, at least he didn't have to worry about money! Ultimately all human beings are pretty much struggling with something, from what I can see. However, I really, really want to win a BIG lottery so I can fully understand what it is like to not worry or struggle financially. Indeed, winning might prove to 'blight' me. It might be dreadfully burdensome. However, I am WILLING to accept the prize money, if for no further reason than to STRUGGLE with the outcome.
One of the things I like about your books is that the characters are complex and messy. They have very real but also contradicting motivations, just like people in real life. For instance, Eleanor in "Slaves", Florence Collins in A Certain Age, and Peyton Amberg are women who want to be successful in their own right but also feel dependent on men. Is that a good way to describe your characters or, as a man, am I missing something?
Again, I don't know. I think in A Certain Age Florence wanted the societal conveniences and acceptance that come -- at least in my experience, in NYC -- from being married to/associated with -- a wealthy man. (And, these days, same sex is also a status thing). I don't think she felt dependent on a man -- not for love, really -- but for status. She felt like she had waited too long, at 32, the game of musical chairs was ending and she didn't have a seat. Peyton Amberg was different than Florence, it was in a sense a study of a nymphomaniac, she had a void she kept trying to fill: adventure, excitement, basically she was looking for love but since she did not understand what love was, the hunger was all consuming. I can't explain further, I don't think. Both books are in a way about desperation, despair, wanting and an inability to find an inner peace.
When you write, are you more interested in advancing a plot or exploring the lives of your characters?
I don't think plots are my forte. I always think of E.M. Forster's advice 'the king died and then the queen died' is different than, 'the king died and then the queen died OF GRIEF' the latter is a plot. I'm paraphrasing Forster now of course. How does real life work? Dickens was heavy with the plot. And the coincidences too. Most of 'real life' is not a plot. You are born, you go to school, your parent’s divorce, you go to college, you get a job, you get married, you have kids, your parents die, whatever -- it's a string of events. How do you turn a string of events into a plot that, in so many ways, is NOT real life? Even W.G. Sebold, who one reads for the purity of the writing, manages to put a plot into the work of some sort, however un-plot like. The novel: there are suspense novels, mystery novels, horror novels, family sagas, historical novels etc. the person living her or his life may or -- more probably -- doesn't see their life as having a plot. There's very little way to understand much more than waking up in the morning, eating breakfast. Let's say you have a bad night's sleep and in the morning you are irritable with your child and so that child goes to school that day and gets in a fight with another kid and gets suspended and during that time hangs out in the park and burns down a nearby house, killing an elderly woman and her grandchild and blah blah blah. To see the 'plot' on the part of the person who was irritable that morning with their child, would take an outside observer. Because otherwise, we'd all go crazy, just because we got irritable with someone the entire planet is destroyed? Or, you're very kind to someone and give them five dollars and that gives them just enough to buy some bullets? What I'm trying to say is, just because you as a person are irritable at breakfast, you're not taking part in a plot.
How do you go about creating characters in your fiction? Who are some of your personal favorite characters that you've created?
I can't even remember my books. I struggle writing, sometimes it is more of a struggle. When I am done I have a good feeling for about five minutes. If my book gets accepted, published, I feel good for about five minutes. I can't feel so good for more than five minutes. And there are some fun moments in writing but they are rare and then I do feel good for five minutes. Sometimes I write a line or so that I can still feel good about. Or the moment when a character starts doing stuff I didn't know they would do, that is a good feeling.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you've published 12 books, including a memoir. Has it gotten easier or harder to keep writing over the years?
Yes, I wrote about that many and I did write more that never got published. And it got harder over the years with nasty reviews 99.9 per cent of the time and I mean that seriously, and no money, and fewer brain cells. And I used to wake up determined DETERMINED I would write 1,500 words a day like a job, just DO IT good bad indifferent until the book took off on its own recognizance or there was enough of a finished book to get an actual idea and start re-writing (like my mom would say, 'gee, this book really starts to take off on page seventy, throw out the first seventy pages and start from there'). I'm not complaining, I had a lot of fun. But if you do something and you don't make money and you don't get good reviews and it's not that much fun to do it most of the time, you get tired out.
In the 1980s, you were part of the glamorous party, art, and literary scene in NYC. What was special about the city and that time to you?
I had so much fun then and met people and traveled all over the world and ate in all the restaurants and went to openings, nightclubs, theater, ballet, opera, openings. And back then you could pretty much create your own outfit, even if you didn't have the same cache as rich people buying Hermes and Valentino etc. one time a magazine made me over to look like a rich person and, wow, did I command respect and was ushered into the V.I.P [. board members club at the opera. free champagne, for sure! Other times I went to Three Roses on Canal Street back when NYC was ROUGH. In retrospect, had I been more confident, had I had any self-esteem, had I been less scared, had I had any financial cushion/security to fall back on (other than scrambling to apply for grants/awards, writing a story that possibly The New Yorker might buy for 3k that would pay my rent for 3 months) had I been prettier, had I not been treated with hostility, well, gosh! Things might have been different.
You and other popular young writer in the 1980s became known as the "Brat Pack." Did you resent that label or is it a badge of honor?
It did not bother me because it had nothing to do with me and other people I barely knew/met. It was odd to be lumped together, but the media sure liked it.
You also knew Andy Warhol in his final years. What was he like -- and what's was it like knowing someone who was already a legend?
Now I wish I had written down everything he said when I would get home every night because he was so so so funny and in a really brilliant way, dry, observant, witty and I did not write down what he said and he had me howling with laughter every night and now I can't remember what he said. and he was so maligned at the time, by critics, by a lot of people, they were so snarky about him - a has-been gay aging pop artist - but he did not let it get to him, at least outwardly, and he always told me, 'gee Tama it doesn’t matter what they say about you in a column, it's how many inches they give you' but he said it in a much better way. but, the difference is, he loved going out and going to the places and seeing the celebrities and the latest play, show, opening, club, whatever, and he loved the attention = good, bad, indifferent -- and I just can't stand it. I just feel invaded, accosted, scared. There is no fun in that for me. That's why I left the city, I like to see some plants growing and my horse and the seasons, and in NYC if you are a success you don't have a second to realize it before you are rated a SECOND CLASS HAS-BEEN TOAD. Which is how they treated Andy, but he didn't mind.
You're a female writer in a male-dominated field. How did you deal with the sexism that came from that? And what do you think about #MeToo?
I don't think people realize the level of contempt that men have for women (I'm generalizing now) but until recently women were no more than something held 'a little higher than my horse, a little lower than my dogs' anyway life is so so short, I know I am lucky there is dental care and antibiotics and it is strange first you are young, as a female, and considered a sex entity or just plain and valueless, and then you get old and you become invisible as a female, but if you are an old guy, you are still esteemed. But that's my opinion.
As someone who has lived in and written a lot about NYC, what do you think about how the city has changed over the years?
It is not the same place where thirty years ago although that time was almost over, you could come to NYC and survive, you did not need to have money, you just needed to escape where you came from, you needed to have desire, dreams, ambition, you needed a community with which to identify, you needed to go there because you wanted to 'make it'. You could find probably a cheap apartment, you could find a job that was in a copy shop or a waiter position that would pay for the rent, if you were young you could go out at night and find other lunatics of your ilk. now it is a city of young P.R. people paid for by their parents and anxious to get a ticket to a P.R. event on a rooftop where the crowd is composed of other P.R. kids.
You eventually left NYC for upstate New York. What was that transition like and do you miss the city at all?
I don't miss NYC but it is so grim bleak and dreary here six months of the year it is mud, cold, darkness, there is no delivery of food, it is hunting season, they go bang bang bang with the guns, they shoot anything they want and the roads are icy. And it is bleak here but it can be bleak in the mountains of West Virginia and many, many other places but it is not that cold there! then six months a year it is beautiful and there are leaves on the trees, although there are many flies and things, we have horse flies, deer flies, green flies, bot flies, mosquitos, ground bees, wasps, no, I would not choose to come to this area. No no no. I think Hawaii sounds really nice, away from a volcano. Maybe the mountains of Tennessee? Mountains of Arizona? What about, parts of Oregon? I would like to move to one of those places. But I have applied for many, many teaching jobs. I applied for a job at the community college of Laramie, Wyoming but they did not even trouble themselves to respond and say, 'Sorry, Tama Janowitz, you did not get the job.'
What do you hope to accomplish in the future, either personally or in your writing? I am trying to learn how to ride a horse.
I have a horse, she is a 16 year old quarter-horse I purchased from my teacher, Stasia Newell at Newell Farm. I have been riding this horse for five and a half years now. So far, I am not a good rider. But, my dream would be to LOOK good on her. Plus, my mare Fox is, like, my closest friend! I know that sounds silly but we just love each other.
Finally, tell us something about Tama Janowitz that we don't know!
There's nothing I can tell you; really. I am a depressed person who laughs a LOT.
Couldn’t have said it better myself! That said, when you look at the great works and amazing life she's had, I hope you feel some joy! Thanks!
You can find all of Tama's book on Amazon.com here
Great photographers don’t just take pictures – they capture the soul of their subjects, their pictures summon up emotions and thoughts, their lenses pierce into the fourth dimension. Photography is magic – it captures a physical moment in time but leaves a timeless, spiritual impression.
Barbara Nitke is one such magician, a New York-based fine arts photographer whose work concentrates on the sensual, the beautiful, the kinky, the romantic, and the unusual. She has photographed many human bodies in their most intimate, transitory of moments and has found, in her pictures, their deeper and perennialbeauties. In addition to her amazing photographic projects, Barbara has worked as an on-set photographer for NYC TV shows and movies, and, most intriguingly, for the NYC adult movie and BDSM scenes. She has also taught at the School of Visual Arts and is a much accomplished, widely admired artist whose work is constantly in demand. She even took on the Attorney General of the United States in court over "indecency" -- and won!
Barbara was kind enough to answer some of Mr NYC’s questions about her love of photography and her career, and she shares her memories of being an on-set photographer during the last days of the NYC adult film world of the 1980s. She also gives some great advice for aspiring photographers, what she’s working on now, and why NYC will always be a great place to be a photographer.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you became a photographer.
I had originally wanted to be a writer, but found that I don't like the process of it. Staring at a blank page, figuring out what I want to say, struggling to find the right words - all that. I was in my late twenties when I first picked up a camera and started taking pictures for fun. I loved it immediately. And I realized I could explore all the fascinating little nuances of people much better through pictures than I could ever do with words. So photography became my medium.
You worked as an on-set photographer during the last days of the Golden Age of Adult Film. How did you get involved in that business?
My ex-husband produced a famous porn movie called Devil in Miss Jones in the 1970’s. When he made the sequel in 1982, I had just taken up photography and asked for the on-set stills job. I was such a beginner that I’m sure no one else would have hired me. Fortunately the director, Henri Pachard, liked my work and started hiring me for all of his shoots. That was a great break because Henri was highly regarded in the industry and worked all the time.
When I was working on my second movie, Nasty Girls, I saw the opportunity to do an art series of behind-the-scenes photos of that world. It totally ignited my passion, and that was what decided me to become a fine art photographer.
What was the adult business in NYC like back then? What made it a "golden age" – and why did it end?
It’s hard to imagine now, but back then we shot real 35mm film on big movie cameras. Home video cassette players had barely been invented. There were no DVD’s, no home computers, no Internet. People went out to old-fashioned downtown movie theaters and actually stood in line to watch sex movies.
A lot of craftsmanship went into making the movies. There were scripts, script supervisors, lighting technicians, sound technicians, hair and makeup people and even wardrobe supervisors.
Looking back, that was pretty amazing! We made porn movies the same way that arty, independent features were made. All of that would be unheard of in today’s world, because now anybody with a GoPro or even an iPhone can make a porn movie.
But at the time, that was all normal to us. We only realized it was a Golden Age later, when we looked back to how the industry had changed after cheap video productions took over.
What is the art of being a good adult photographer – and what was it like shooting people having sex right in front of you -- exciting, boring, weird, or something else?
Actually, I don’t think I ever was a good adult photographer. I’m a great observer of people, and I’ve been on a decades long mission to humanize what might be called the dark side of the sex world. But more on that in a later question.
I always had a lot of mixed emotions working on the porn sets. The days were very long - often 12-16 hours - and at the end of a day I had experienced so many emotions that it would seem like a year had gone by. There were long boring stretches, followed by excruciating moments when I wanted to reach out and save someone from - I’m not sure what. From being exploited? From their drug habit? From their personal demons? The deeper I looked into that issue, the harder it was to define.
And then an hour later, someone like Miss Sharon K. Mitchell would sashay across the set, gloriously naked and unequivocally proud. Which would confuse me even more.
You memorialized a lot of your pictures from that era in your book American Ecstasy. Tell us about this book and why you wanted to publish it?
American Ecstasy is my personal memoir, in pictures and words, of the twelve years I spent working as a still photographer on porn sets in New York in the 1980’s. It was important to me to publish the work because of my conviction that porn stars, and all sex workers, should be valued and treated with respect. Our culture creates the need for them, and then trashes them for fulfilling that need. I think that’s wrong, especially having known so many of them, both men and women. They deserve a lot better from us.
I see that the introduction of your book was by the legendary art critic and "philosophical aesthete" Arthur C. Danto (who lived in the same building I grew up in!). Was he an influence on your work?
Wow, I can’t believe you lived in the same building! Arthur was not an influence on my work, but he should have been. He was a witness in a lawsuit a filed against Attorney General John Ashcroft back in 2001. I was incredibly honored when he agreed to write the introduction to American Ecstasy. A great man, and a great mind!
And talking about aesthetics, adult work is often accused as being "male-centric"? As a female photographer in that business, is this a fair accusation – and how was your work different?
I guess adult work is male-centric in that the intended customers are men. At least that was true back in the 80’s and 90’s when I worked in the industry. But I don’t think that’s because there’s any conspiracy against women or female sexuality - it’s just harder to figure out what visually turns women on, while making them feel safe at the same time. Women are a much more difficult audience to target. If someone could figure out how to make porn movies that turn women on, they’d probably make a fortune.
As a female working in the business, I realized from the beginning that my view was different from what was considered good porn photography. There was some cross over - some porn moments that I really did think were hot - but overall I thought the scenes were obviously fake and sophomoric. (Although I did get a big kick out of the really campy ones.)
I was much more interested in capturing the complex emotions both the male and female stars were experiencing than I was in making them look like heroic sex machines. I found that it was pretty easy to identify just the right angle that would work as a good porn shot. Once I had the shots the producers needed to sell their movie, I considered myself free to roam around and get the moments that I wanted for my art series. For example, I loved it when somebody would yawn and look at their watch during a lens change in the middle of an orgy scene.
How has the art of adult photography changed or evolved in the digital age?
I honestly haven’t kept up with pornography in the digital age. From the little I know, it’s a lot more niche oriented and features much more extreme acts. What we thought was really badass back in my day, would probably be considered quaint today.
You photographed some of the most intriguing NYC stars of that time like Ron Jeremy, Vanessa Del Rio, Jerry Butler, Siobhan Hunter, and others. What are your memories of them and who were some of your favorite stars to shoot?
I loved them all! I always thought Ron Jeremy was a lot more complex and a lot smarter that his public persona, but that’s true of a lot of public people. Vanessa was really, really a STAR. She was probably the last true big time porn star. What people probably don’t know is that she has always been extremely down to earth, and has a wonderful sense of humor about herself and her stardom. Truly refreshing. Jerry Butler was horribly conflicted about his choice to be a porn star, to the point that it was sometimes painful to watch him on the set. And Siobhan Hunter was a medical school student, and is now a practicing doctor. But it would take days to tell all the stories. Of course, there are some really good ones in my American Ecstasy book.
You were also the on-set photographer for the acclaimed film Three Daughters directed by the legendary Candida Royale. What are your memories of that movie and Candida?
Three Daughters was a milestone movie in the industry, and it was a great attempt by Candida to use porn in a very positive way. For one thing, she wanted to educate the viewers on better ways to have sex. She was a pioneer in exploring female sexuality from a porn perspective.
My memories of working on the show, however, were conflicted.
Siobhan Hunter was cast in the lead role, and the role brought up a lot of bad memories from her childhood. Because we were friends, I was aware of the personal pain she was going through during the shoot. But in the end, I believe Three Daughters might have served as a catharsis for Siobhan, and I’ve always hoped it turned out as a positive experience for her.
In mainstream movies, it feels like there are less and less "big stars".
It seems like in the Golden Age there used to be some big stars too (come to mind). Like the big movie star, is the "adult star" in decline today?
Yes absolutely! I’m not sure why, but that does seem to be the case.
Have you seen "The Deuce"? If so, any thoughts?
I could probably come up with little things to quibble about, but overall I LOVE The Deuce. Love Maggie Gyllenhaal, and have loved her all the way back to The Secretary. She is brilliant and utterly fearless!
You also used to photograph the BDSM scene in NYC. How did that differ from your earlier work -- and what did you learn about BDSM that "square" people don't understand?
What was really interesting for me was coming from the been-around-the-block, sex worker world of porn into the real BDSM scene, where people are inhabiting their own sex lives. They aren’t acting, they’re really falling in love and expressing their love for each other. It was so different to see, and I knew right away that I wanted to understand what they were feeling and express that in photographs. They taught me that everyone expresses love differently, but it’s all love, no matter what it looks like from the outside.
Do you feel like society has gotten less "prudish" -- and do you feel like your work contributed to that (or is it just the Internet's fault)?
Well, of course I would like to give myself lots of credit for changing society! But I think there’s really just a natural progression of people becoming more sophisticated as they are exposed to more imagery and different ways of thinking. Overall, I think that’s a good thing.
You also worked on mainstream movies and TV shows in NYC like Law & Order,The Producers and, a personal favorite, Slaves of New York. What are your memories of working on those and other mainstream projects?
When I worked in porn, the crews were made up of young people fresh out of film schools like NYU. It was the first jobs they could get, and they were all excited and eager to prove themselves. There was a great spirit of enthusiasm and pride in craft back then, which I hope still exists today in the porn world.
Slaves of New York was a lot of fun! And so was Law&Order and all the other shows that I currently work on. The work conditions are much better - union rules and all - but I do sometimes miss that youthful exuberance of the New York porn world back in the day!
You've also taught photography, including at the School of Visual Arts.What do you try to teach your students about photography and what are the best lessons an aspiring photographer can learn?
Here’s my biggest tip - take a lot of pictures. And I also think that boring as it is, you can’t avoid learning the nuts and bolts of f.stops and shutter speeds, lighting ratios, ISO and white balance, and all the other technical things that beginning photographers sometimes try to skip. Digital cameras make taking reasonably good pictures very easy, but to really be a photographer you have to know the craft. With your camera set in manual exposure mode!
As a professional woman, what do you think of the #MeToo movement? Considering your work, you must have an opinion!
It’s so hard to have an opinion on the #MeToo movement. Sometimes I think things have gone way too far, when anyone can be publicly called out for a bad date or a passing remark. And then I think of women being drugged and raped by guys who are powerful enough to get away with it, and I’m very glad for the brave women who have come forward.
Tell us a little bit about what you're working on today and your hopes for the future.
I moved up to Harlem four years ago and built a run down motel room set in my living room. I’m creating a series of work featuring all the different people who show up to stay in the room. We make up a character and a little story, and the people act it out. It’s been an amazing experience so far. Most of my characters are actually crew people who I’ve worked with for many years on the reality show, Project Runway.
Finally, what makes you love NYC -- and is this still a sexy city worth photographing?
How can I count the ways that I love New York? It’s such a great city! I love all the tremendous energy, diversity and raw humanity that you can reach out and touch 24 hours a day. It really is the city that never sleeps, and always comes up with something new to inspire me.
The first movie I ever saw in a theater was Annie, back in 1982. I didn't remember much about it except that I really liked the woman who played the bad guy's girlfriend. Sure, she was pretty, but there was something else about her, something more, a mysterious allure, that captivated me. You got the feeling in her performance that there was a depth to her character that we were only seeing the surface of, that there was more, a lot more, than met the eye. Oh, and she could sing. Boy could she sing!
I found out later that this actress was Bernadette Peters and I'm a lifelong fan. Ironically, the first time I saw her was in a movie but she hasn't done a lot of movies in her career (although before Annie she was in the Steve Martin break out The Jerk) -- she's mostly done Broadway and is one of the last, truly great musical theater stars (check out my review of her performance in A Little Night Music from 2010). She's originated roles in Sondheim's A Sunday in the Park with George and Into the Woods, she's played Annie Oakley and Mama Rose, and very soon she'll be taking over from Bette Middler (the Divine Ms. M) in Hello Dolly. Ms. Peters is one of the great entertainers of our time, up there with Ethel Merman and Chita Rivera, and she'll be remembered long after she retires. So, if you're a big fan like me, you should read this big interview with The Divine Ms. P from New York magazine. What's surprising about it is how modest, how normal she sounds -- considering that she's a Broadway and NYC legend, she sounds downright humble. Amazing. If want to see The Divine Ms. P in something, you should watch her in two very different roles, from two very different eras, from her long career: the 1989 movie Slaves of New York and the current Amazon show Mozart in the Jungle. She's great in both, playing very different characters, but her talents, as always, shines through. The fact that her career has lasted so long, in so many forms, speaks to her huge talent. P.S. A couple of years ago I saw Bernadette Peters being interviewed by some airhead on a red carpet and this interviewer was talking to the Divine Ms. P like she was a Kardashian or some such cultural bottom feeder (lots of "girlfriend!" etc.). I was offended that a massive talent like her was being talked to like a dummy by a dummy but classy way she acted the just made her all the more divine.
To read Tama Janowitz's acclaimed short story collection Slaves of New York is to gaze upon a world both familiar and distant.
Published thirty years ago this summer, the book was prescient about
the exigencies of life in NYC: the spiraling rents, the ruthless
ambition, the preening narcissism of the successful, the desperation of
those who aren't -- and the way that people and their relationships are
warped by this existential maelstrom. The book is set mainly in the
world of artists, where creativity clashes with reality, where love
clashes with money. According to the book, a "slave" is someone in NYC
who lives with someone they don't really like (or even loathe) but are
forced to by economic circumstances; the "slaves" are the focus of
Janowitz's funny and moving book.
Today, when so New Yorkers can barely afford to live
here, there are probably more "slaves" here than ever before. Ms. Janowitz was on
to something way back when.
And yet ... Slaves of New York is about a time and place gone
by. In 1986, when the book was published, the "downtown art scene" still
existed, even thrived. Sure, crime was a lot higher, the city was in
rough shape, and people were fleeing. But the NYC art world seemed more
like a community, a world unto itself that defied the city's decay, a
defiant flower blooming in the tundra. Today, the downtown art scenedoesn't
really exist in NYC anymore. Sure, there are still big fancy galleries
downtown but most of the struggling and innovative artists have been
banished to the outer boroughs or out of the city altogether. The
creativity, for the most part, has gone elsewhere. Go to downtown today
and it's mostly fancy clothing stores and restaurants and glass
buildings. The NYC art scene is much more diffuse today, less of a
community and more of an abstract idea.
That's why, in many ways, Slaves of New York is more relevant
today than ever. It saw where the NYC art scene and NYC itself was
headed: into a world of concentrated wealth and mass economic
disparities, into a world where art wasn't valued except for how much it
could be sold for, where relationships were transactional and
fungible, where NYC is a place so many live in but few believe really belongs
to them. In many ways, this world existed then but in a somewhat more
primitive form; today, it is institutionalized, absolute.
I wrote about Slaves of New York several years ago when I did a
blog post about the NYC art scene in the movies. In 1989, the book was
turned into a movie by the Merchant-Ivory team, better known for
adaptation of classic British novels. The movie is, in a word, funky. It
stars the always fabulous Bernadette Peters as Eleanor, an aspiring hat
designer who lives with her awful boyfriend artist Stash in his
downtown loft (she is his "slave"). The story concerns how Eleanor
liberates herself from the her "slavedom" and re-starts her life as a
single woman and an artist in her own right. (Some might call the story a feminist
statement but, if so, it's not very a preachy one.) The movie, like the book,
also concentrates on an artist named Marley Montello, a rather absurd
character who intersects with Eleanor at various points.
What I love about the book and the movie is how the story is both so
New York and so rooted in the 1980s art world yet also universal,
timeless. It's about struggle, it's about love, it's about the
complexity of all sorts of relationships, it's about wanting to become
something and facing so many immovable obstacles to achieve it, it's
about confronting your fears. And it's also a wonderful snapshot of NYC
at a time when it was no longer a place where people really could afford
to starve but where it was still possible, with very little money, to eke out an existence. Without knowing it, it was a swan song. Without knowing it, it was
about the mythic downtown NYC art world -- just before the deaths of such
icons as Andy Warhol and Basquiat, who ruled and defined it -- came to an
end.
I remember discovering Slaves of New York and Tama Janowitz
many years after the book was published and the movie came out. It was
the summer after I had graduated from college, and I was working in a
miserable job in a sterile corporate environment, dreaming of a life
that was more artistic, more fulfilling, more ... funky. The Bravo
Channel (then a great arts and independent film channel and not a
reality TV grindhouse) was showing Slaves of New York endlessly. The movie and then the book inspired me. It felt like Tama Janowitz had created this story just for me.
She seemed to get me -- get my anxiety, my fears, my hopes and dreams,
and my romanticyearningsabout the possibilities of life and NYC. No, I wasn't an artist and
didn't aspire to be one (except, maybe, a writer). But Slaves of New York,Eleanor's story, seemed to be the only thing understanding me at a time when no one else seemed to. Eleanor, c'est moi (even though I'm a dude).
Slaves of New York has a proud legacy. It's a real NYC story
and a poignantencapsulation of an era. But its the pure delight of the writing and the story's universal message that makes it great. And that's why, three decades after
it's publication, people still read and remember it. And when my kids
are old enough to read Slaves of New York, and I want them to learn more about the NYC I grew up in, it will be one of the first books I'll give them.
