HvdK 
Radiant princess Othalia in low-key. Judging my photographs is a professional process. I look at the light, the composition, I may even have some ideas about styling, but most of all I judge the photograph by its quality as a portrait. Rarely do I look at a picture, mumbling: ‘This is hot!’ There are very few exceptions. Like this picture…
I was working on a photographic sequence with Toy. This particular photograph of Toy smoking doesn’t fit the sequence, but it is a beautiful standalone, so I decided to post it here. Thank you, Toy, for a great productive afternoon!
Zo’n vier jaar geleden toen mijn eerste grote tentoonstelling in Moskou opende, heb ik weinig gemerkt van een anti-gay klimaat. In ieder geval niet bij de Moskovieten zelf. Uitgaansgelegenheden bezoekend had ik eerder het gevoel dat Moskou het San Francisco van het Oosten was. Op dat moment werd echter wel al van overheidswege hard aan … Read more
Sinds een paar jaar woon ik vrijwel midden op de Amsterdamse Wallen. Dat was al jaren mijn wens, omdat ik als 22-jarige een hekel had aan het verslaan van krakersrellen of slordige oorlogen tussen volksbevrijdingslegers. Dus koos ik als fotograaf en verslaggever voor de Wallen als mijn werkterrein. Mijn eerste opdracht vergeet ik nooit. Zo … Read more
Volgens mij heb ik nooit een opleiding echt helemaal afgerond, maar van de introductieweken heb ik altijd wel een waar feest weten te maken. Zo ben ik ergens in 1976 naar een avond van Dolle Mina gegaan, de toen vooraanstaande feministische beweging. Ik kreeg daar prachtige verhalen te horen over de emancipatie van de mens … Read more
I started out as an assistant portrait photographer and I liked that job. When the contract ended there was this job opportunity in advertising. The pay was good but I never really got used to the art directors and the marketing people who without exception seemed to think of themselves as godlike creatures.
So, I quit and started working for a Dutch weekly in 1977. One of my first assignments was to photograph heroin hookers working in the vicinity of Rembrandt Square.
I was very young and inexperienced, so I really had a hard time approaching heroin prostitutes on the street to ask them to pose for me. One of them finally gave in on the condition I would score some heroin for her. I was so shy that once we got to work I photographed her in the mirror while she was doing her make-up.
Toen ik voor The Kinky Web gevraagd werd een column te schrijven, heb ik heel voorzichtig geïnformeerd waar die over zou moeten gaan. Het antwoord kwam na enig aarzelen: ‘Gewoon, opa vertelt…’ Daar denk ik nu dus wekelijks over na. Is dat wel zo verstandig? Nostalgie is leuk, maar de BDSM in de jaren zeventig … Read more
Artist Herbert Gentry (1919-2003) made vibrant expressionist paintings of figures and faces, mixing global influences and African American experience. Referring to his childhood during the Harlem Renaissance, Gentry asserted, ‘Harlem prepared me for Paris.’ After completing military service in World War II, Herb Gentry returned to Paris for art school – and found himself in the heart of the expatriate American community in Montparnasse. Gentry moved to Scandinavia in 1959, but always kept a studio in Paris. In 1969, he returned to New York and became a resident of the famous Hotel Chelsea. At home on both continents, Herbert Gentry resided, painted and exhibited on both sides of the Atlantic. His work is represented in important national and international museum collections.
[ source: HerbertGentry.com ]
Looking at this portrait of Herbert Gentry with a friend of whom I have unfortunately forgotten the name I can see now how much I was influenced by American photographers at the time. The Hotel Chelsea looks quite seedy on this particular picture, but at that time this was one of the better rooms. There were cockroaches everywhere and Mr. Bard proprietor of the hotel had a hard time convincing people that ‘nobody ever died in this hotel’. Despite the deaths of Dylan Thomas and later Sid Vicious’ lover Nancy Spungen and many others. Although we have to give Mr. Bard some credit for the fact that most were pronounced dead on the way to or in a hospital nearby.
Born 1899 in Paris, René Shapsak studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, London, Bruxelles, emigrated to South Africa in 1932 or 1934, lived in Johannesburg (47 Saunders Street, Yeoville – where he held art classes for many years), executed numerous commissions, was committee member of the Transvaal Art Society, Johannesburg, 1937; left for the USA in 1954, his wife Eugenie and sons Leon, Maurice and Paul followed in August, 1955, the family staying for years at the famous Hotel Chelsea, with an atelier nearby at 219 7th Ave corner 23rd Street, New York NY. [source: Art Archives South Africa ]
Dr. René Shapsak was photographed by me in the Hotel Chelsea in 1981, four years before he died in 1985. Very few have heard of this artist. Yet he did sculptures of Mahatma Chandi and John Cecil Rhodes in Great Britain. His work of Ellen Church Marshall, the American Florence Nightingale, stands in the headquarters of United Airlines in Chicago, and Bas-Reliefs of her are in the leading air terminals throughout the United States and around the world. The State of Israel has acknowledged with gratitude Dr. Shapshak’s sculpture of former President Harry S. Truman, which is in the Israeli Parliament Building.
Surely Dr. Shapsak was not an easy man to deal with. He was a teacher at heart. He told me many interesting stories about the people of his time like Arthur Rubinstein, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller. But to listen to him, I had to get up extremely early in the morning, refrain from smoking and have breakfast with him at the Greek coffee shop at the corner of 23rd Street. I still own the recordings I made during these breakfast meetings.
When I was young, my biggest dream was to go to New York. I had read so much literature and had seen so many movies about New York, that I just had to go there, and finally I went at age 25 thanks to an assignment for a Dutch magazine to interview and photograph the legendary photographer Art Kane.
I also knew where I was going to stay: the Hotel Chelsea. Not because of the Sex Pistols staying there occasionally, not because of the Grateful Dead, Charles Bukowski or William S. Burroughs. No, just because of one Leonard Cohen song entitled Chelsea Hotel:
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel / you were talking so brave and so sweet / giving me head on the unmade bed /while the limousines wait in the street
That was the life to live, at least in the perception of a 25-year-old photographer. I never got to see the limousines in the street. 23rd Street at that time was not a very classy place to be, but I did enjoy my stay there tremendously.