Category: Photography

  • Ever asking the question, “What is this mystery, this you and I,” Ira Cohen was a giant frump with a full fuzzy beard, a shaman, a guru, a poet/ photographer/ filmmaker. Long a fixture of downtown New York, he was beloved by many. At the Bowery Poetry Club, he was celebrated by surrealist art impresario…

  • Hollywood sent a message at this year’s Oscars. Winning Best Actor for his role in THE BRUTALIST, his second for this prize, Adrien Brody hoped for a healthier, happier, more inclusive world: “Don’t let hate go unchecked.” That’s not a small ask. From his first win for THE PIANIST in 2002, the actor whose mother,…

  • The fictive White Lotus resort in Thailand, the locus of Mike White’s mega HBO series in its third season, has nothing on the Six Senses wellness retreats in India. Seeing the staff line up to greet guests arriving by boat in episode one recalled entrée into the extraordinarily fabulously fashioned Six Senses Fort Barwara in…

  • A fashion crowd crammed into the Campbell Bar at Grand Central station this week, to celebrate Consuelo Vanderbilt Costin, covergirl of Vogue Magazine. For most of us, the issue was unreadable, in Czech, but that didn’t matter. Air kissing is universal, after all. So is the greeting, “You look great.” That applied to everyone in…

  • Even Covid could not keep Michael Moore back. Of course, everyone at Hamptons DocFest was disappointed the irascible filmmaker could not make the scene for his Pennebaker Career Achievement Award—named for D. A. Pennebaker and presented by Chris Hegedus–, but show up he did, larger than life on Zoom. “Now everyone can see I really…

  • Harrowing tales of black boys and men during the Jim Crow era are the meat and potatoes of Pulitzer Prize winning author Colson Whitehead’s fiction. When filmmaker RaMell Ross, who made the acclaimed 2018 documentary “Hale County, This Morning, This Evening,” was given an advanced reading copy of Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, he was working…

  • Old Hollywood likes their leading men handsome and debonair—think Cary Grant, Rock Hudson—but with this year’s Gotham selection of A DIFFERENT MAN for the top prize, Best Feature, a new look grabs at your attention. You have to love an awards season that starts with a celebration of –well, difference. A hit at the New…

  • Documentary filmmakers Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck had a shoutout of praise for their 2022 film, THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS –from Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks. These veteran filmmakers, the FORREST GUMP team, are not the only fans. For their latest doc, GAUCHO GAUCHO, about Argentinian cowboys, making the rounds of film festivals to great acclaim,…

  • From the edgy look of his movies—FLESH, TRASH, HEAT, to name a few–you would never think of Paul Morrissey as deeply religious. With his friend and partner Andy Warhol, a fellow Catholic, he made art, collaborating on many cinema-verite films and other ventures including the purchase of cliff-high acreage in Montauk overlooking the Atlantic. The…

  • At the end of Audrey Flack’s new memoir, With Darkness Came Stars, published when she was 92, she takes stock of a life well lived: I am lucky that my mind remains clear and sharp, filled with ideas for new art. The creative spirit is running strong and I continue to work. These words, and…

  • Back in the day, I thought Harry Smith was a deadbeat. Now, he’s a dead Beat. A filmmaker, artist, student of the occult, mysticism, cats’ cradle and paper airplane master, and famously a star of one of Andy Warhol’s interviews, Harry Smith was a cultural figure in his day, as a rich exhibition of his…

  • The glorious conceit of Mark Cousins’ documentary about British producer Jeremy Thomas is filming him from the passenger seat of a posh car on the way from London to Cannes, for the yearly film festival of festivals. A man of routines, Thomas followed the family business of filmmaking, always having a film to promote, but…

  • On the brink of 50, legendary Rufus Wainwright’s music genre is hard to pin down. But one thing’s certain: he’s got lots of friends, family, and fans, all in full display at his birthday concert bash to benefit Montauk’s historic lighthouse, now turned 227 years old. Maintaining this edifice takes more than a village, and…

  • Invited to a party to celebrate designer/ costumer Patricia Field and the fine documentary about her life and career premiering at Tribeca, one ponders the question: what to wear? After the Tribeca screening of Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field directed by Michael Selditch, a colorful romp through her decades-long career in the business…

  • “I hate it,” architect Peter Marino exclaimed surprising even himself, as he noted Gotham Hall, a cavernous former bank on Broadway, decorated for the 350 guests arriving for a tribute to him, and to art collectors Tom Roush and LaVon Kellner. This was Guild Hall’s winter gala, celebrating too the venerated East Hampton art institution’s…

  • If you think scenic Sicily is having a moment in this season’s White Lotus, check out the Italy of Bruce Weber’s ravishing The Treasure of his Youth: The Photographs of Paolo di Paolo. Opening with archival shots of children on the street, a girl on communion day, Anna Magnani with her dog, Marcello Mastroanni, Pier…

  • Legends of King Arthur and his court are having a moment: The Green Knight in theaters, and out east, Bay Street Theater’s production of Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot –under the stars! Now a classic, its signature song “If Ever I Would Leave You” sends a particular nostalgic chill—ah love—especially for the musical theater genre that…

  • OM—though that’s not my mantra. Dan and Maureen Cahill hosted an event for the David Lynch foundation to support veterans by providing them with TM—transcendental meditation– life changing according to most practitioners, some of whom attended the concert and sit-down dinner on a gorgeous property between the old and new highways leading into the town…

  • A longtime collaborator with Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, and other literary figures, photographer Elsa Dorfman was a true American original. A portrait artist often associated with her main instrument, the large format 20" x 24" inch Polaroid camera, Dorfman, an influence to poets, and, from all reports, a great friend, died this week at 83.…

  • The story of Peter Beard has a grim end: some 19 days after he disappeared, after search parties including helicopters had given up their trawling the rocky coast, the erstwhile adventurer has just turned up. Some thought he went into the sea, lunch meat for sharks, if there are such fish at these shores, but…

  • Mark Bozek’s documentary, The Times of Bill Cunningham, features a fresh look at his subject from a 1994 taped interview: Hard working and uniquely talented, Bill Cunningham eschewed the limelight yet pursued and promoted style, at celebrity functions and on the street, often perched on his bike on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th…

  • A bookish night at the New York Public Library, the Literary Lions gala celebrates writers. Charlie Rose attended, and was ensconced in conversation as pigs in blankets were passed. Jean Doumanian confessed to hating long cocktail hours, but the gabfest went on for a while. Writers do have stories. Julie Taymor is finishing her film…

  • Come out of the dark: Ugo Rondinone’s work at Guild Hall lifts us in radiant shots of sunlight. In the two large gallery spaces the walls are bare, lit by fluorescen fixtures. You might be mistaken to think you are in Walmart under this austere light, but the effect on the art is, well, looking…

  • Two white sculptures stood grandly erect on a corridor of green, stately gentlemen greeting guests for the annual summer benefit at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton. In plaster over burlap, the work by the artist/ filmmaker/ sculptor Julian Schnabel fit the earthy yet well-groomed site, a home to art by Yoko Ono and Buckminster Fuller.…

  • The sound of typewriter clicks permeates “Camp: Notes on Fashion” the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute’s extravaganza exhibition, relieved only by a recording of Judy Garland singing “Over the Rainbow,” from The Wizard of Oz. The MET gala, its yearly benefit this week, may only exist as a distraction from all that the “Camp” show shows,…