Fred W. McDarrah
Steven Kasher Gallery
There wasn’t much Fred W. McDarrah missed. The 1939 New York World’s Fair? He bought his first camera there. Occupied Japan at the end of World War II? It’s where U.S. Army paratrooper McDarrah first started taking pictures. It’s quite a remarkable prelude, but he still had the rest of the 20th Century to document.
With his Zelig-like ability of being at historic occasions, a neighbor told McDarrah he was starting a newspaper called The Village Voice. He ended up being their first photo editor and was the only staff photographer for over 20 years. The Steven Kasher Gallery presents some of his greatest work from this time period (1958 to 1979, all in black and white) for an exhibition titled Fred W. McDarrah: Save the Village.
The exhibit covers everything from Stonewall, the closing of the Cedar Tavern, Warhol’s Factory scene, 1960’s peace marches, and everyone from Hubert Selby, Mayor John Lindsay to Donald Trump.
No matter what one thinks of him, Trump is a fascinating subject for the camera. Is there anyone else who somehow looks simultaneously miserable and content? (James Spader, perhaps?)
Trump’s photo is from 1979, and it’s odd to see him pre-80’s, as most tend to associate “the Donald” with the Gekko decade and beyond. Looking down at McDarrah with his characteristic doughy, pouty smugness, it appears as if he can smell the Grey Poupon and “trickle-down economics” just around the corner.
And there’s Susan Sontag, looking like insouciance personified, staring at us staring at her, while holding a cigarette at a 1962 sex symposium. She comes across as a slightly more mainstream Morticia Adams in a French New Wave film, about to ignore the advances of a drunken Roger Sterling.
On April Fools Day 1966, the Velvet Underground are shown performing, bathed in darkness, silhouettes dwarfed by the giant eye of Nico on the screen behind them. The image perfectly captures the grimy phantasmagoric beauty of their music.
Another indelible image is McDarrah’s fellow photography giants, André Kertész, Sylvia Plachy and Fred Ritchin at a gathering in 1978. Plachy is in the middle of the two men, focusing a mildly amused, yet loving grin at a young boy conversing with the adults. It takes about a minute to realize that the child is Plachy’s son, a five-year-old Adrien Brody.
Those of us who were also children (and musically obsessed) during this time can practically hear songs of that era like “Reminiscing” by Little River Band or Billy Joel’s “My Life” emanating from this photograph.
McDarrah photographed plenty of artists as well, including Franz Kline in 1961 standing casually proud by one of his black and white abstract paintings. He also managed to get a classic shot of a Pop Art summit featuring Warhol, Wesselmen, Lichtenstein, Rosenquist and Oldenburg together at a 1964 Factory shindig. To be a fly on that paint splattered wall.
You might recognize the iconic 1959 photo of Jack Kerouac giving a reading in a Lower East Side loft. He looks burnt-out, with arms held out in the Jesus Christ pose.
A much darker portrait of LES life is portrayed in a 1967 photo of Robert Kennedy, a year before his assassination, visiting a run-down tenement that had once been occupied by Jacob Javits. The appalling effects of poverty are reflected in the haunted, furrowed brow of this rich and powerful man, who can only stare at the floor. Hanging crookedly on the cracked wall behind him is a portrait of Christ wearing the crown of thorns, gazing toward the heavens, giving the appearance that even he can’t bear to look at these conditions.
These disparate people and events are linked by one man with a camera who bore witness. Now we can too.
Originally published by DAEP Media.