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Charles Gatewood
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Charles Gatewood has been photographing the American underground for over 40 years, published a dozen books and made numerous videos. His early photography was documentary in nature and had a distinct political edge as seen in his first book SideTripping edited by William S. Burroughs. These images of various scenes from New York and Mardi Gras in New Orleans in the early 1970's manifest a sardonic and mischievous commentary on social behavior that was still in a new stage of enlightenment following the upheaval and revolution of the late 60's.

Between 1972 and 1976 he made frequent trips to New York's financial district resulting in a series of photographs entitled "Wall Street". Unlike other work that emphasizes sexuality and the idiosyncracies and weirdness of human existence, these images are ethereal, formal and emotionally void with an underlying theme of capitalism and control. "Wall Street" illustrates the message that perhaps money and high finance constitute the real obscenity of our age. The black and white concrete desolation of these photographs provide a set of visual metaphors for that most secretive perversion of all, high finance

Excerpt from Interview with Gatewood by Paul Benchley

There's a famous quote from Flaubert: "One does not choose ones subject matter--one submits to it.'" I never had to think about what I wanted to photograph. It was the Sixties. There were anti-war protesters and Hells Angels and Black Panthers and crash pads and naked hippie chicks, and when I moved to New York City in l966 I found myself right in the middle of it all. I began photographing alternative lifestyles and that's what I'm still doing.

 



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