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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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