PHOTOGRAPHER JANET DELANY UNEARTHS LONG-LOST 80s NYC

West coast photographer Janet Delaney made a half a dozen trips to New York City between 1984 and 1987 and after decades in storage, she’s dusted off these forgotten pics of a time gone by. She told Gothamist;

“In the 1980s I made 11 x 14 prints in my color darkroom and showed them to a few people, but I was busy photographing in San Francisco and Nicaragua at the time so I did not do anything with them. 

At that time San Francisco just did not have the critical mass of people that make the streets come alive. My other projects were very focused, political in nature and technically complicated. Photographing on the streets in New York was pure pleasure. I embraced the hunt, the unexpected encounter with strangers, the challenge to describe people in the context of a particular place. This all kept me very engaged.”

Delaney has shown these photos at various galleries, but has no current plans for a NYC show, but she says she would

“welcome the opportunity to show the whole series in New York, they look great printed up big!”

They do! Have a look.

(via Gothamist)

PHOTOGRAPHER CAPTURES A RAINBOW & LIGHTENING – TOGETHER!

Photographer Greg McCown snapped this amazing shot. It’s like the perfect poster image for a gay superhero movie! He had this to say about how it was captured:

“Finally! After years of trying I finally got my lightning and rainbow picture. What an awesome evening. I headed out late afternoon, shot a little on the SE side, then drove across town catching up with Bryan Snider and Chris Frailey, two awesome photographers/stormchasers. We shot for a little while, then got dumped on by a microburst while driving up the freeway. I-10 slowed to a near crawl, with half the traffic pulling over and stopping completely. Can’t blame them as visibility dropped to 20 feet. At the next stop Bryan and Chris headed NW back towards home and I headed SE towards this rainbow. I was just trying to find a foreground without telephone poles or other junk in the way. Found it just in time as this was the last bolt to strike before the storm dissipated into nothing.” 

What can you say, the guy likes lightening. Check out more here.

ATTACH THIS TO YOUR IPHONE TO GET A PRO SHOT OF MANHATTANHENGE TONIGHT

Yes, you must have heard of it. Manhattanhenge. It’s also referred to as the Manhattan Solstice, occurs when the setting sun aligns with the east–west streets of the street grid in the city. The best views of the sun perfectly setting between some of the city’s most iconic buildings are offered at 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 57th, and those streets nearby at around 8:15 PM. It usually strikes twice a year, in late May and again in mid July. Last night had everyone out with their camera phones. But to get a REALLY pro shot, you might try the DxO One, a compact gizmo with an SD slot, touch screen and internal battery with its own lens that gives you raw 20.9 megapixel images. DxO uses the image processing technology that presently is used in over 300 million phone cameras. This new camera weighs less than an iPhone and is 2.65 inches high. You can easily carry it in your pocket. The iPhone screen acts like the viewfinder. To get technical, you also have ISO selection from 100 to 51,000. All the controls you’s expect on a DSLR are present like manual, aperture and shutter priority as well as scene selection mode options. Unfortunately, this new camera isn’t available sometime in August. But you’ll be ready for next year’s Manhattanhenge.

JESSICA LANGE IS A PRETTY GOOD PHOTOGRAPHER

Actress Jessica Lange is a seasoned photographer, with an exhibition record that includes shows at Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York and ROSEGALLERY in L.A. The Arts Santa Mònica Center in Barcelona just opened a solo exhibition, Unseen with 150 images that Lange took over the last 20 years, during her travels across Mexico and the U.S. In 1967, Lange got a scholarship from the University of Minnesota to study art and photography, but she dropped out to travel to Europe instead, where she began taking mime and acting classes in Paris in 1971. She became a model, got discovered by Hollywood and the rest is herstory. In the 1990s, when her then-partner—the actor Sam Shepard —gave her a Leica as a present and Lange began shooting again. The work is a bit Lisette Model the teacher of the oft-imitated Diane Arbus. Lange doesn’t date her photographs, and only provides a location as a title, which emphasizes even further their timeless appearance. And from the subject matter here, you can see why the Oscar winner loved American Horror Story. When Anne Morin, the curator of the exhibition, asked her what she had aimed to capture in her photographs, the famously cryptic Lange simply said: 

“Oh, things I see.”

Unseen will be on view in Barcelona through June 28.

ARLENE GOTTFRIED: SOMETIMES OVERWHELMING

As a girl, Arlene Gottfried went to Woodstock armed with a small 35mm camera that once belonged to her uncle and afterward, her Brooklyn neighborhood offered her plenty to shoot in her in her own neck of the woods. Gottfried spent a lot of time in Coney Island and Brighton Beach, as well as the Manhattan’s burgeoning nightclub scene. She says about the era;

“It was very diverse. It still is in some respects, you see a lot of different people, but it’s not the same. It’s almost impossible to describe how it was and the new New York City, how it evolved to what it is now, we’ve lost so many little businesses that gave it color. You used to know the people who ran the shops and there was a lot more grit and interesting textural backgrounds for all the different kinds of people you saw on the street.”

Gottfried considered herself reserved, but once the camera was in her hand, it acted like a shield against the world, as well as an excuse and she felt comfortable asking strangers if she could shoot them;

“If I wanted to take a picture, I would just ask the people. I don’t do it as much now; now I just shoot and don’t ask people, but back then they were looking right at me and they were close to me so they were in agreement obviously!”

Note, the next to the last image is of actress/ writer/ musician (and my old pal) Ann Magnuson who used to live across from me on Tompkins park, back in the day. An edit of another 30+ images, many from her book Sometimes Overwhelming, is now on view at Daniel Cooney Gallery through December 20. (Photos, Arlene Gottfried; via Slate)