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♪ Say where did I see
this guy ♪

♪ In Red River ♪

♪ Or A Place In The Sun ♪

♪ Maybe The Misfits ♪

♪ Or From Here To Eternity ♪

♪ And everybody say is
he all right ♪

♪ And everybody say
what's he like ♪

♪ And everybody say he sure
looks funny ♪

♪ That's Montgomery Clift
honey ♪

♪ New York New York
42nd Street ♪

♪ Hustlers rustle and
pimps pimp the beat ♪

♪ Monty Clift is recognized
at dawn ♪

♪ He ain't got no shoes
and his clothes are torn ♪

♪ And everybody say is
he all right ♪

♪ And everybody say
what's he like ♪

♪ And everybody say he sure
look funny ♪

♪ That's that
Montgomery Clift honey ♪

Because I started
out there in the street

or wherever I was
taking pictures,

I carried that through my
whole body of work, really.

There's something in my brain

that tells me the moment
to shoot.

Something inside clicks.

And you're not looking through
the camera all the time,

so you lift the camera
and shoot.

It is extremely spontaneous.

If I have color film, I
see everything in color.

If I have black and white,

I see everything in black
and white.

And after years of doing it
and being faster at doing it,

it became very intuitive,

and it was arranging
chaos in a certain way,

because I was very
conscious of composition.

The frame was very
important to me.

What was really fun in
the world of analog

as opposed to digital
photography

was finding out later what
made me click the shutter.

"Oh, yeah,
that's what made me do it."

And that would appear in
the dark room.

And I'm glad to have done
it that way,

because it was much more work,
but it was much more fun.

I got this apartment with
two friends,

if you can believe it,
given the size.

But it was summer of '66,
and it was $109.

There was a bed in that room,
which is my kitchen dark room.

There was a bed over here.

And that was always my bed.

I had been at Pratt for
two years,

and I got a job working
for a photographer.

He was a fashion photographer.

He was just starting out
in New York, Alberto Rizzo,

and he became actually
quite famous.

I knew nothing about
photography at all.

I didn't know what
a strobe was,

and I'd never worked in
a dark room.

But somehow we hit it off,

because we seemed to like
all the same American things,

movies mostly.

I learned on the job, and
I bought my first camera

and just went out into
the street, taking pictures.

Then I started using a flash.

Anyway, I just fell in love

with everything about
photography

and never went back to Pratt.

So I stayed with him for
two years,

and by the end of that summer,

my buddies moved out,
and I kept the place.

Well this is a photo
that I made

with my first camera, from
my first roll of film,

which is April 1968.

Came from Coney Island.

Do you
remember taking the photo?

I do.

There are many, many

that I have no memory at
all of taking,

but I do remember that,
because I was hoping I got it,

and I got what I wanted, yeah.

'69 was an amazing year.

I hitchhiked across the country
for several months,

just picking up pictures
everywhere I went.

I bulk loaded film.

Otherwise it would've
been way too expensive

to shoot the way I shot.

Slept by the side of the road.

It wasn't anywhere near
as terrifying

as it would be now to
hitchhike, serial killer wise.

And I was at a rock and
roll festival in Texas,

Texas Pop Festival,

with my girlfriend as it
turned out.

And I went to
a stationary store

and forged a press pass for a
magazine called Show Magazine,

which I knew nobody would
ever check.

And so I sat up front all
three days

of this rock and roll festival.

So I got closeups of BB King,

and Janice Joplin,

Johnny Winter.

So when I came back
from this trip,

I had hundreds of rolls of film

and needed to process
everything,

'cause I didn't trust
doing it on the road.

So I had to build a
darkroom in the kitchen.

There was a rock and roll
paper called Crawdaddy,

and I used to see it around,

and I went over there
with the pictures I took

from that rock and
roll festival,

and they hired me as a staff
photographer,

so that was my first job.

Crawdaddy was a quarter
fold newspaper,

like Rolling Stone when it
first started.

It was basically about sex,
drugs, and rock and roll.

The whole place was
filled with characters.

Richard Meltzer was one
of the main writers there.

A lot of musicians would stay

right across the street,
at the Albert Hotel.

In those days it was either
the Albert or the Chelsea.

I took a lot of pictures in
hotel rooms.

It was a lot of fun, because I
went to Fillmore all the time

and hung out backstage
and wherever.

I think I developed a point
of view while I was there.

A lot of it was getting past
the machine of the camera,

which I always say is kind
of the most important thing.

Then I became a better printer.

All the things that you have
to do when you're starting out.

I met my grandmother for
the first time

when I was eight years old.

I flew by myself on a
TWA plane to Los Angeles.

She greeted me at the airport

and immediately told me
what we were gonna do.

We were gonna have
a fantastic time.

We were going to go to
Disneyland on the opening day,

which we did.

This is 1955.

Then she decided at a certain
point to move to New York.

I would come in and see
her as often as I could,

because she would show me all
the cool things of New York.

She took me to "Psycho"
on the opening day.

She knew what I liked.

She was fluent in Spanish,

but we would go to Bunuel movies
to brush up on her Spanish,

and that's how I learned
about Bunuel.

We went to a place called
Hubert's Museum,

which had game machines on
the top floor.

And then you would go
downstairs,

and there'd be just all kinds
of sideshow attractions.

She was sort of an Auntie
Mame character to me.

In introducing me to the city,

she made the city
an adventure for me

that never stopped being
an adventure.

And I wanted to live an
adventurous life in the city,

not knowing what you were
gonna do from day to day.

At the age of 76, she
decided to become an actress.

She was like that.

I said, "Well, great, I'll
do a portfolio for you."

And she immediately got work,

because everyone found her
so engaging.

She did print ads,
commercials, soap operas.

I was working on a George
Romero movie, doing stills,

when I heard that she
was taken ill,

so I ran back and met her in
the hospital,

and she died a few days later.

Harriet Sappington.

There was a period where
I wasn't doing anything,

and so I got my only job
outside of photography,

which was selling records at
Bleecker Bob's record store.

His record store was
right across the street

from the Bleecker Cinema.

He and I were friends, and he
knew I wasn't doing anything,

and he asked me if I wanted
to work there.

And so I was alternating

with David Johansen and
Lenny Kaye,

who were also not really
in bands yet.

And then I got hired by a
newspaper called The Herald...

which had a brief life in
New York.

It was a Sunday paper.
It was huge.

It was designed by a brilliant
designer

named Massimo Vignelli,

who designed an early
version of the subway map.

And it won all kinds of
design awards.

So they ran the pictures
quite large.

And they asked me to do a
little bit of everything.

A lot of portraits,
a lot of news stories.

Patti Smith and I would do
rock and roll interviews.

There was also a section
called Inside,

which was partly about
interior design,

but for me it was mostly
about how people lived.

Once I made a picture

that I called "Mrs. Sills
in Her Husband's Den."

Later on,
the writer Veronica Geng,

who was my girlfriend
at the time,

did a very funny spread
for Harper's Magazine,

using that photo and
including captions

that annotated the husband's
belongings in that room.

The art director was
George Delmerico.

We met very briefly at
Pratt and hung out a bit,

but we became much closer
friends working at the paper.

And then my friend,
the poet Jim Brody,

was asked to edit
the culture page.

He'd written at Crawdaddy
while I was there.

That's how we met.

He was the one who brought
on Patti Smith in early 1971.

Jim Brody is really
a significant poet

in the Poetry Project
milieu of the early '70s.

He's not the most well-known
poet outside of that scene.

And so to find out that
James and Jim Brody

sort of had this really
great relationship,

it was really
fascinating to me,

as somebody interested in
that aspect

of downtown New York music,

which is very connected to
the poetry community as well.

You know,
around CBGBs and Max's,

of where these things
really colluded.

And James was documenting
all these figures

that you very rarely see
any good photographs of.

I remember once
Brody and I

visited Duane Allman at
the Chelsea

the afternoon of the last
concert at Fillmore East.

That was June '71.

I like artifacts.

And the Duane Allman picture
is full of artifacts.

The tape recorder,
the science fiction novel,

All the hands coming
out of...

The can of beer,
the joint, the...

Pack of Kools.

Is it Kools?

I think so.

That's right.
Kools, Schlitz.

He's reading A.E.
van Vogt.

Yeah.

Listening to the music
and kind of...

and he just lit
a cigarette.

He's
nearly rapturous.

- Yeah.
- Yeah.

That's what I thought.

He's like,
"This is the life."

Nine times out of 10 in your
photographs,

there's always this one aspect

that there's something
else going on.

It's not just the subject.

There's Soft Machine sitting
around in a hotel lobby,

and this woman who just has

absolutely nothing to do
with them,

she just happens to be
sitting there

With sunglasses.

With sunglasses on.

You put her in the photograph.

And that happens a lot,

where there's this other thing
in there that just sort of

turns the story.
- It's this awkward moment.

It's slightly awkward,
but it's humorous.

It's great.

For one assignment,
I went on set

for a Milos Forman film
called "Taking Off."

This is the first time I've
actually been on a set.

The scene was
an audition scene.

♪ I was born ♪

Kathy Bates came and
played guitar

♪ Full of angels and kings ♪

Carly Simon.

♪ So I'm gonna have
another drag ♪

This is before they were
well known.

And the camera would just
rove around.

♪ And at the end ♪

Then they eventually came
to right in front of me,

and I felt the camera
on my face,

and it winds up being the close-up
in the film.

So that was the first time I
was ever on camera in a film.

And then I went on the set

of "The Gang That
Couldn't Shoot Straight,"

and that was where the scene
was in a car wash.

So the picture I have is
the lion in a car wash.

Every one of these
photographs

has James in the photograph.

And it's like that's why it's
funny or poignant or noir.

It's all him.

And when we go through
the contact sheets,

it's him tenfold,
a hundredfold.

If it's a beautiful
actress, maybe 1,200-fold,

like it's a thicker envelope.

It was very early on.

It was like the third story
I did for The Village Voice.

I did a story on sex workers
in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

It was '89, and it was
pretty, pretty rough,

and these were girls who were
basically neighborhood girls

who were also crack addicts.

They were homeless. Their
families had kicked them out.

The only way that they could
pay for their addiction

was by doing sex work.

They were like 20, 21,
sweet as can be.

I would just hang out there
and catch them between tricks,

and they'd jump in the car with
me, and we would just talk.

And so James was assigned to
photograph it

once I turned the article in.

But they didn't run the photos,

because they were concerned

that the girls might be
identifiable.

But I remember I came to
the apartment,

you came down,
you got in the car,

and I said,
"Do you wanna get a coffee?"

And he said, "No, I'm fine."

And I kind of couldn't
believe that.

He was just sitting there with
his camera,

ready to spend a night out.

- Without coffee
- In Williamsburg,

without coffee.

And then when we got out there,

we really had to wait
all night,

and James starts playing that
we're cops on the stakeout.

He started calling me Pete.

And then he asked what I was
gonna buy Marie for Christmas.

Remember this?

I treated you like
a male cop?

Yes, you treated like
a male cop

and asked what I bought
my wife for Christmas.

And the reason I really loved
that so much

is 'cause it was so damn
boring, right?

Which is exactly how
those guys would talk,

so it just tickled me.

And then that night we
went after the day was over

and went and got fried
chicken under the L.

That was the first job we
did together.

And within like three or
four days

we were kind of going out.

Then we did about four
other jobs after that.

Mostly we worked on our own,
but we had a lot of, I think,

understanding about
each other's job habits.

I think that we gave each
other a lot of freedom.

James had his place in
Manhattan.

I have my place in Brooklyn.

And then weirdly we end up
getting a place out here,

which is where we
live together.

When we share any kind
of time, it's out here.

Vogue had Abbott on and
Penn shooting their covers.

But Bazaar had quite a
few younger photographers.

Hiro was a famous
photographer there

and he did a lot of very
elegant covers.

Bea Feitler and Ruth Ansel

were the co-art directors
at the time.

They made a super
elegant magazine

and very clever and beautifully
designed.

Bea was also a book designer,

and Abboton and Bea did
a book about Lartigue.

She loved photography, and
photographers loved her.

Bea asked me if I would
be the staff photographer.

They'd never had one.

They wanted to have
something more news oriented.

And my first assignment was
the Women's March for Equality

in August '71, where there
were throngs of women

marching up Fifth Avenue,

and counter protestors all
along the way.

There were right-to-life
people,

but there were also men
who were mocking the women.

There's that one famous
picture of his

of one of the first feminist
demonstrations in New York.

And there's all these
people in the background.

They're all caught
mid-sentence.

And there's this young
female cop,

and she's standing next to
a male cop.

It's almost like he's puzzled
and she's exasperated.

I shot a lot of Halston
fashion shows.

It was just his showroom.

I was not interested in
fashion at all,

which is pretty funny,

considering I was the staff
photographer

of a fashion magazine.

I spent a few days with
Liza Minnelli

when "Cabaret" came out.

This is her godmother,
named Kay Thompson,

who was the author of
the Eloise books.

And in the middle is
Earl Wilson,

who was a famous syndicated
columnist.

So I was able to spend days
with people,

which changed when it
became much, much harder

to get that kind of access.

But I could photograph
anybody I wanted virtually.

And I knew that Hitchcock
was in town

because he was promoting
"Frenzy."

Since I adored Hitchcock,
I set up a meeting.

He always stayed at the St.
Regis Hotel.

So I went there, knocked on
the door, Hitchcock greeted me.

Alma, his wife, was there.

She ordered a tea for us.

But there were no PR
people around.

In those days it wasn't
that way.

At one poin this was
the shot I got

that I probably liked the most.

Because you don't tend
to see him that way.

It was wonderful,

the three of us just
talking all afternoon.

My camera was a Nikon F
with a flash,

just this very small
Vivitar flash on top of it,

and that's all I ever used.

I really didn't take
any equipment with me.

Later on I did, that being a
35- and a 50-millimeter lens.

That was all.

His flash work, I don't
know how he does it.

The thing is it's so easy
to do that

and make it look amateurish.

Something that looks like
a single camera top flash

is like 101 done improperly.

James, that's part of his
technical frigging genius.

It's almost clinical,
but it's not detached.

He gets closer than
I could get to.

I wouldn't put my camera
that close to somebody's face

or frame it that tight.

What I loved about flash
photography

was I loved the hard edge.

I love contrasty light anyway.

I love bright sunlight, and
I like shooting at night.

I loved all the back date
magazine stores

that used to be on
Sixth Avenue.

The crime magazines and
the photography.

That was a kind of journalism

that I really liked to
check out.

Well, of course I loved Weegee.

I loved the obsessive nature
of his work.

So much of it was
nighttime work.

And Arbus I discovered
much later.

There was a show called
New Documents

John Szarkowski did at MoMA,

and there were three
photographers:

Lee Friedlander, Gary
Winogrand, and Diane Arbus.

And I loved her use of flash.

I mean, it was what I was
doing as well,

but she'd been doing
it earlier,

and I think she was attracted
to Weegee's work too.

Another part of the job,
one of my favorites,

was photographing the endless
parties and benefits going on.

It was my only paparazzi
situation.

This was one of the parties.

It's called
the Fabulous Forties.

And this is Jane Russell
leading the conga Line.

Lana Turner arrived with
an entourage

of I think her hairdressers

This is Cary Grant
discussing his knife phobia

with dinner companions.

He had a lifelong fear
of knives.

I was not just photographing
celebrities;

I was photographing anything
that I saw

that was amusing to me.

And Bea and I were just
having a ball.

Because they ran four pages
of these tiny little pictures,

and we were being as
satirical as possible

and getting away with it.

I used to be on the floor
laughing,

looking at his party pictures,

because the people in
the pictures, you know,

this is how they wanted
to look:

prosperous and a little
bit famous

or well-known and having
a great time.

And he just would capture
their vanity,

and it was hilarious,

'cause they were so
completely unaware

of how they were coming across.

In those days,

people were avoiding
looking in the camera,

whereas now maybe they pose.

So I was able to get pictures

of people that were
totally unposed and caught,

which was a great advantage.

Often I'd be the only
photographer there.

I learned how to catch
things quite well

under those circumstances,
'cause I was forced to.

I enjoyed everything
I did there.

I was imposing my point of
view, for sure.

Our point of view,

because Bea and I were
collaborators, really, on that.

And what I insisted on doing

was all my own processing,
all my own printing,

everything in my apartment.

I made my own edits and
turned them in.

They might not use them all,

but they only used
what I chose.

Consequently, they never
touched my negatives,

and I own everything
I ever shot.

One of the worst things
in movies,

up until people got good
at doing it,

is people driving in cars.

Because all those years

is crappy rear projection
or whatever.

All those years.

And then "Gun Crazy."

Do you remember "Gun Crazy"?

Oh yeah,
"Gun Crazy."

Joseph Lewis shot it in
the backseat.

Remember?

When they do the robbery.

Camera's in the backseat.

It was just sitting there.

She gets out of the car,
goes in, robs the bank,

comes back out, gets in
the car, and they take off.

Take off!

It was...

It was so cool.

I told you to
stay in the car.

I couldn't
help it!

The copper came out there!

He's one of those
people where the movies

are in his life every day.

He's quick to go to a line
from a movie

to address the situation.

So I think it's so in
his blood.

But I would say there's
a degree

to which a certain kind
of imagery

of the city that we see in
James's work,

we only know that New York
from movies.

I only know it for movies, anyway.

That's where you sort
of live in it.

So it conjures up cinema to me.

The first thing I ever
stole was a flip book.

I was eight years old,
and I was in a Woolworth.

Incidentally, it was
about the moving image

and still pictures,
and how appropriate.

So I put it in my pocket,
and I left,

and I showed it to my
sister when I got home,

and she wound up ratting
me out to my parents.

So I was made to go back
to the store

and present it back to
the salesperson there.

Years later,
I was living in the Village,

and there was a antique
store around the corner,

and they had the exact
one that I had returned,

only it was 10 bucks.

But I bought it, of course,

and added it to my
collection of flip books,

'cause over the years I've
become flip book collector.

Both my parents loved movies,
particularly my mother.

And we loved watching
movies together.

I must have been about
12 years old,

and my mother said, "This great
movie called 'Citizen Kane,'

you have to stay home from
school today and watch it."

So we did.

And that's how I saw
that for the first time.

I think in terms of form,
I was influenced as much

by black-and-white movies
as anything.

We're noir guys. We love
that kind of lighting anyway.

But those guys influenced you

as much as any still
photographers, right?

Yeah.

All those wonderful
cinematographers.

John Alton and Gregg Toland.

Did you ever go to
Cinemabilia?

Oh yeah.

Terry Ork to be
the proprietor there.

Yeah, yeah.

Cinemabilia is kind of
the birthplace

of New York punk in a way,

'cause that's where Tom
Verlaine worked there

with Richard Lloyd,

and Richard Hell was kind
of part of that scene.

And Terry Ork, the proprietor,

is the one who brings
Verlaine and Lloyd together

that Television comes out of.

And then he's friendly
with the poet Patti Smith,

and there's this introductions
that go on.

'73 is such an interesting
time in New York.

In some sense it's this
really transitional time

between hippie culture

and to sort of more punk,
avant garde culture.

And hippie culture, it
goes to the country,

where it kind of is
supposed to go.

That was the greatest
cinematheque in the world,

those movie theaters on
42nd Street.

Because even though there
were grotty,

there was hardly any
porno then.

They would playing westerns.
You could see a triple bill.

Liberty had westerns.

The Apollo had
the foreign films.

That's right.

There was the Harris.

- The Selwyn.
- The Selwyn.

And the Anco was the one.

That was the one he
couldn't really go to.

It was too horrible.

They left the lights on
in the balcony.

That's his scene of
the famous,

"You piss on my date and
you say you're sorry?"

No, they'd say, "Be cool,
be cool."

"Be cool.

"You on my date and you say,
'Be cool'?"

My whole family on my
father's side

were all members of Local 306

of the Motion Picture
Projection Agency.

For a long time you couldn't
show a movie in New York City

unless you had a union
projection center,

no matter what it was.

And so I trained to be a
motion picture projectionist.

I'd strike the carbon
arc and the whole thing.

You didn't know this?

I knew you knew projection.

So they said,

"What theater do you
want to go and train in?"

And I said,
"How about the Thalia?"

which was this old
revivalist house mirror,

95th Street.

So I went up there and
I knocked on the door,

and the guy is like...

You know, the guy reading
the Daily News?

"Yeah? What do you want?"

I said, "I'm a trainee from
from 306."

He says, "Oh, okay, okay."

And he's working on
the hot splicer.

'Cause the movie they're
playing there

happens to be "Rebel Without
a Cause."

And he says, "Fuck, man!"

The hot splicer is giving him
a hard time,

so he rips some of
the movie out

and throws it on the floor.

It's curling around like this.

And I'm the vice president

of the University of
Wisconsin Film Society.

I'm horrified by this,
you know?

So I pick it up, and he says,

"What, are you we
gonna do this?"

And I said, "Nah, I gotta go."

I never really took this
job off that.

What's the scene? Do you
remember?

It's the great scene
when he's telling him,

"Leave me..."

Jim Backus.

Jim Backus is over
here, the mom, whoever-

Anne Doran.

Of course he knows
all this stuff.

And James Dean is there,
and he's in the middle.

And he's saying,

"You're tearing me apart!"
- "Tearing me apart!"

You're tearing me apart!

What?

Harper's, there came a time

where they did a redesign of
the magazine,

so there was no need for a
staff photographer anymore,

so I lost that job.

But then The Voice moved
over here,

the corner of 11th Street,

and I went over there

and started doing freelance
work for them.

Everyone there was great.

And so, eventually, in 1976,

they asked me to be the staff
photographer

along with Sylvia Plachy.

and Fred McDarrah had
been there for years,

so he was running a
kind of intern program.

He wasn't shooting
quite as much.

Fred, he had really
documented a lot of the '60s.

He was a gruff person.

He wasn't softly nurturing.

But he gave you
the opportunity.

Between
the two of you,

how many photos do you think
you've taken?

Oh my god,

We can't even count it.

No, you can't go there.

It's too many

Millions.
- Too many

- Millions?
- Yeah.

- Probably, at least.
- Yeah.

I was brought in by Clay
Felker who bought the paper.

I used to work for him
at New York Magazine.

A lot of us were people he
brought in,

and we were thrown together,

and there was gonna be
a new world.

James comes in during
the Felker period

with George Delmerico.

And Clay Felker's personality,

it was definitely oil
and water.

He came down,
and the first thing he did

was assign everybody to
write stories

about the importance of
Halloween.

You have to imagine
that staff of Bohemians,

leftists, Marxists and
all of that, enraged.

One writer actually came
up, tore up his paycheck,

and threw it at Felker,
and it was Ron Rosenbaum.

On the other hand,

the paper fought Felker
to more than a draw.

The Voice came to prominence
in the '60s, certainly.

But I think the '70s and '80s,

it was really an important
paper in the city.

Well the Village Voice
was the story of New York

told in real time.

For me,
moving to New York in '76,

the Village Voice was the map.

I would get the Voice
because all the movie listings,

all the theaters, the Thalia.

Every Wednesday when
the Voice came out,

I would circle my whole week.

I think what happened
in the '70s

is you get original voices,

but not using the pronoun
"I" so often

and writing as observers

of these different emerging
cultures in the city.

It played a real role

in developing off-Broadway
as a venue.

All these different
areas, performance art,

that we covered regularly,
the dance scene.

J. Hoberman on underground
movies.

It also had a definitive
role in music journalism

that Bob Christgau, more
than anyone, put together

and almost an academy of
Black writing.

The Voice was always
the pioneering publication.

We would publish stuff, words,

that other people wouldn't
publish

in newspapers at that time.

We covered stories that
other people didn't cover,

and we broke news all the time

and were often stolen from by
the Times and the tabloids.

They were either stealing
the stories

or they were ignoring them,

and it was hard to say
which was worse.

If you were interested
in the city

and all you wanted to do
was write about the city,

the Voice was the perfect
place for that.

I mean, for me,
until very recently,

my world ended at
the Hudson River.

I think the strangest
country you can fly to

from Kennedy Airport
is America.

No one was really going
the streets then.

There had been people over
time who had,

but nobody was regularly
doing street.

I remember I went to
34 murders one weekend.

I don't think I saw a
reporter the whole time.

There was a gang Coney
Island called the Homicides,

and I thought,

"Well, what if I just live
with them for a while?"

I wrote the piece, and
they wanted me to go around

with this guy, James Hamilton.

I'd never gone around with
a photographer before.

I wasn't too big on it.

At that point in my life,

I think I thought the perfect
magazine

was the New Yorker
without cartoons.

And plus, these are people,

they're not called
The Homicides for nothing.

But the guy running them
was a guy named Outlaw.

His real name was George.
Everybody called him Outlaw.

And I became pretty
close to him.

He said it'd be all right.

The good thing about working
with a gang

is if the main guy says it's
all right, then it's all right.

The thing that's really
interesting

is that you raise a camera
lens to your basic gang kid,

they're either gonna turn away,

or they're gonna like
play to it.

James had a way to do it
where they did neither.

I think the Outlaw was very
moved by James' pictures.

One reason you become a gang
member is you want to be seen.

I think he James actually
saw him,

and not as a gang guy,
but him him.

And I think probably because
James just,

he has a respect for people,

and he looks to see
who they are,

and he saw George, I think.

And most of them died

not long after the story,
in one way or another.

It was a violent scene,
Coney Island in the '70s.

I think the most
important thing

that we both were lucky
enough to have at the Voice

was very much our own
point of view.

And we were allowed to
express it always

And to grow into it and
therefore create a style

to the point where I
would always recognize

a Sylvia picture, and...

- I could recognize you.
- Yeah.

I think you're much
more classical.

I always think of yours
as being very elegant,

very beautifully lit.

Yeah, I was very
concerned about the composition

to the extent that it was
rigid almost.

To me composition
was very important too.

But somehow your
pictures feel looser than mine.

- But I'm much looser.
- Yeah.

And also we
had all those assignments.

Yeah.

We got introductions
to people.

Fantastic introductions.

And then we developed our
own film and printed it.

I didn't know that you
developed all your own.

Oh yeah.

I came home, I worked at Night
in the dark room upstairs.

I dried it in the bathroom in
the shower.

Me too.

And they let you keep
your pictures.

You and Sylvia
couldn't have been more different

in your style of photography.

I thought we got along very
well there because of that,

because we worked in
different ways.

Yeah.

And with different editors
and different writers.

A lot of the pictures
I started doing

were for Guy Dupre.

Guy was just as visually
aware as I am.

He would even point out things.

It was just a wonderful
thing to be side by side,

and not being alone, and
having a friend there.

And there were several
people like that for me.

There was Anna Mayol,
there was James Ridgeway.

Were there
really fistfights?

I don't know.
I think Stanley Crouch.

Ron Plotkin and
Stanley Crouch, I think.

You remember.

I do.

There were a
few very fiery people.

There was
a lot of fire.

Yeah.

And a lot of arguments.

A lot of people yelled
at the boys,

and it was something
I got so used to

that, when people
visited me in the office,

I would say, "Oh,
that's just so and so.

He yells on Wednesdays."

There were fights,
there were friendships,

people broke up.

There were loads of sexual
relationships.

- Absolutely.
- Yeah.

A lot of places now, that
could not possibly happen.

That would be a bad thing.

There was just a lot of
cross pollination.

I always said it was composed
of people

who would never be at
the same party together,

people who really hated
each other,

but who all appreciated

the kind of freedom the paper
offered,

and it was really an
immense amount of freedom.

- I mean, crazy.
- It was insane.

If I was the editor now,
I would go like,

"No, you can't do that."

This is like one of the few times
in the history of humanity

that the so-called writers
and artists were in charge.

That's really what they
were selling.

The leeway to set up
the piece the way you want

rather than in a traditional
news fashion

was really important.

The first feature I
wrote was on James Brown,

and the first paragraph
was something like,

"Everybody just calls
him James.

We don't call him James Brown."

It's very vernacular.

It's just writing about
James Brown

as a familiar, beloved
guy in your neighborhood.

And then there were huge,
vast ideological conflicts

between feminists, queers,

and whom we called
the white Boys,

which was the political
writers,

operating from a much
more traditional place.

People invaded the front
of the book.

Sometimes the front of the book

invaded the back of the book.

There were arguments
about who got the cover.

The thing is everyone
wrote their pieces on time,

and everybody had their say.

Everybody got into the paper.

I was removed from the Voice
in so many ways

because I worked in
the political sphere there,

the cultural sphere.

I covered everything,

but I didn't have to get involved
with office politics ever.

No.

Because I didn't hang
out there.

I would come and deliver
and walk away.

I could observe it sort
of from a distance.

I loved being part of
the family,

which is why I've always
liked staff jobs.

I like being part of
something bigger.

And this was the Voice,
the whole building.

Downstairs was classified.

Editorial was on the top floor,

and that's where I'd
deliver these pictures.

He drifted in and out,

but people drifted in
and out of his apartment,

which really was part of
the paper.

You would just go up there
and walk in and hang out.

I talk to other people
from the Village Voice

from that time period.

They always talk about
you as being

this kind of silent,
zen presence amongst all this mania.

Everybody had a crush
on you, first of all.

Oh, yeah, yeah, right.

I know that was going on.

We can't go there.

The first story we
worked on

was about these Chinese
youth gangs.

That's right.

But we didn't work together.

We barely saw each other.

I don't even think I really
knew him at all, you know?

So he took the pictures
that went with the story.

And then I guess everybody
liked it,

so then this idea came up

that we should go across
the country,

the United States,
the whole thing,

The editor at the time

was a woman named
Marianne Partridge.

Right?
- Yeah.

And she was game to do
things like this.

And it was basically picking
up stories as we went.

I guess the most
memorable one

was the Cullen Davis
murder story.

Cullen Davis was
this extremely rich Texan

who allegedly murdered his
stepdaughter

and his wife's lover.

So he got off, of course.

And then the jury and the judge

went out for a party
after the thing,

so we got in there, we were
just hanging out with them.

Oh, you know,
where we're from,

it's not really customary
for the judge and the jury

to have a party after
the verdict.

They didn't seem to mind.

So I essentially have a sort
of a mugshot-style picture

of the judge at this party,

and Cullen with his new lover,

and they both got religion,
and everything was hunky dory.

James is cognizant of
what you're looking to do

and works at not interfering
with that.

Also, it's a challenge 'cause
your writing

has to be up to the level
of James's photography.

I think James and I are
in the same business,

but he just gets there a lot
faster and a lot stronger.

It was very depressing in
a lot of ways,

'cause I've been
driving the car,

I'm thinking about the story.

I gotta alk to this guy
and talk to that guy

and talk to this guy.

And Hamilton's just sort of...

He could puts his camera
out the door or the window.

He's not even looking, right?

And so now he takes
this picture,

and it's better than
anything I could.

For a lot of stories,

we'd just come up with
a story together,

and they were often my ideas,

but I would say, "What
do you think about this?"

And he'd go, "Yeah,
I like that."

And James would be the guy

who was gonna provide
the evidence for the case

that this is worth your while.

And he was brilliant at that,

because we really are of
the same mindset.

Absolutely.

We had arguments,

but I don't remember any
aesthetic argument we ever had,

and we must've done 50
stories together.

Long stories.

I don't even remember
arguments period.

I remember a few arguments.

And the Florida one was
like two parts.

I could imagine what
everybody else thought,

like, "Why are these assholes
taking up all this space?"

It's a lot of space.

Pictures ran big.

Art director happened to
be a good friend of ours,

George Delmerico.
- That helped.

George Delmerico.

All photographers were
treated really well.

He never cropped pictures,

and he just had an enormous
amount of respect for the image.

He was an immensely creative
guy, an incredible eye,

and an ability to be erudite
without being pretentious.

He had this apartment with a
skylight on Christopher Street,

and it would snow in through
the skylight

and we would just sit up
doing newspaper layouts

all the time together.

With Felker you began to see

a more artistic kind of
photography,

complimenting the glazer
design of the paper.

And George as an art
director cultivated all this,

Mapplethorpe and others,
Peter Hujar.

It's this merger of art and
journalism,

where one was not in charge
of the other,

but rather they were in
constant clashing,

constant dialectic,
the two elements of the paper.

So you could be as artful
as you wanted to be,

but it had to work as
journalism too.

You could be as journalistic
as you wanted to be,

but it had to work as art.

Sylvia,
her work exudes empathy.

With James,
his work exudes formality,

but the subject is still there
in very, very high relief.

That's a terrific balance and
combination.

The only time our paths
ever crossed on the road,

taking pictures, we were
both assigned accidentally

to photograph a photographer.

Not only a photographer but-

James Van Der Zee.

James Van Der Zee,

one of the great photographers

of Harlem.
- In Harlem.

And so she took my picture,
and I guess I took yours.

With him.

I always felt like I was
always fighting

the quality of newspaper.

He was fighting it.
I wasn't fighting.

You weren't fighting
it. I know you weren't.

You embraced it.

I embraced it.

I liked that messy,
grayed out...

See, okay,
another difference.

It's more tactile.
It's warmer.

You can feel it.

You can touch the picture,
and it's warm

instead of a cold, shiny paper.

Yeah, I wanted them
to jump off the page.

James kind of pioneered
the closeup picture

of somebody that would
appear in a newspaper.

Somehow he was able to
get this face

to pop off the back, almost 3D.

I think that a lot of people
have emulated that since,

because it's so remarkable,

and he should've got more
credit for that.

But he's not that kind of guy.

I would be so fanatical
about my pictures

that I would actually go to
the plant...

where did the printing, like
5:00, 6:00 in the morning,

just to make sure that
the pictures looked good

and had enough contrast
and all that.

And sometimes I would
even take a black crayon

and I would darken
the pictures.

Then Rupert Murdoch
bought New York Magazine

and the Village Voice, and so
there was no Felker anymore.

The first thing he did
was fire the editor,

and everyone united and
said, "We're all on strike.

You have bought $45 million
worth of typewriters

unless you let the editor
fill out her contract."

I mean, we defeated Murdoch.

And as a response to this
whole thing,

we published that alligator
on the cover,

on the theory that it was
the most unlikely cover

that would ever be in
a newspaper,

partly as a middle
finger raised to Murdoch.

We took it 100% seriously.

That was one thing I really
liked working with you,

because it was all
about the work,

and so it was really a good
partnership.

Partners, baby.

Yes.

You have to go like
this, James.

Yes, yes. Okay.

This is the regular
refrigerator,

and this is the wine cooler,

which is perfect for keeping
my film and chemicals

at the proper temperature,
which is about 68 degrees.

And then,
this is my developing tank.

And what I do,

is I

fill this with water.

This I put developer in this.

I have fixer in all the time.

And so what I do is
I lower the film.

These are 35 millimeter reels

that I spool with film

and then drop these in,
in the dark,

and develop 'em for
whatever length of time.

Then I put them in in the water

to stop the developing and
rinse them,

and then I put 'em in the fixer

to fix 'em for a certain
length of time.

And once they're in the fixer,
I can turn the light on.

And then I put 'em in here,
in the water,

and carry them into
the bathroom,

'cause there's no running
water in here.

When there was Bradley's,

this fantastic jazz bar
downstairs,

the piano was right under here.

I would work until 4:00 in
the morning,

and they'd be playing
until 4:00 in the morning.

Often at the Voice, if I
wanted to meet somebody,

I would suggest a story.

I had always wanted to meet
George Romero,

'cause I loved the way
he worked,

so I enlisted the aid of a
critic there named Tom Allen,

who loved to write about
independent filmmakers.

We hung out at the mall,

where he was in the process of
wrapping "Dawn of the Dead."

And so I took pictures
there, in his editing room,

and we just palled around
for a couple of days,

just really hit it off.

And he asked me if I would
be his still photographer

on his next film.

I said, "But don't I have
to get in the union?"

He said,
"I'll get you in the union."

And I said, "Well, as
long as I can take a leave

from the paper, yeah."

So that's what I did

When I was at Rolling Stone,

George's publicist said,

"If you do a story on
this movie we're making,

you can be an extra."

They had this zombie school

where you're supposed to
learn how to be a zombie,

which we got there late,
so I missed.

And so I did everything wrong,

and it was so hilarious,
because they were saying like,

"You walk with your
hands like this,

and I'm walking like that.

He put me in a whole
bunch of scenes.

I think it's 'cause it
was so funny.

Okay, let's go.

And I have a closeup,
trying to get into Penny's.

Pop
'em right here.

I liked his sense of humor.

He didn't tear his hair out
'cause I missed zombie school.

And then I went to work for
his producer,

Richard Rubenstein.

So then James came and did
Knightriders."

James is in that movie too.

He's in every movie he shoots.

Morgan, Morgan,
please concentrate.

The plot is people
dressing up as knights,

King Arthur's Knights,
as a matter of fact,

but on motorcycles, and
jousting on motorcycles.

So it was a really wild summer.

Susan Vermazen wound up
being there

the entire time I was,
on the set.

I had met her first when
she was a photo editor

working for Rolling Stone.

Stephen King was there
that summer.

It was Ed Harris's first
major role.

He was Arthur.

Half the crew were
stunt people,

and half of them wound up in
the hospital once or twice.

But they were great,
heroic guys.

Stunts unlimited.

They were fantastic.

They could do anything,
and they were fun,

and they were relaxed, and
everybody else was so tortured.

George is a prince,

totally dedicated and devoted
to the crew.

So much fun to be with.

He just made the whole
process joyful.

Normally it was stills
photographer photographs,

essentially what the camera
is seeing

so that the pictures can
be used for publicity,

which is the most boring
part of that job to me.

The only way I could have
fun doing it

was to treat it like
a documentary.

George liked that idea.

I didn't even know
that stills

was a job that you can have.

When I did
"She's Gotta Have It,"

I didn't know it was something

he was supposed to pay me for.

I didn't know it was
like a job.

I thought it was just
something you did

'cause your older brother
made you do it.

One picture has to tell
the story.

You're distilling that scene
down to that one frame,

Someone has a gesture,

someone in the moment when
they're looking at each other.

And behind the scenes,

that's a good part of
the job too.

And you're documenting
something for the record,

and only you were there
to record it.

The base stuff, the etiquette,

a lot of it's mostly
common sense,

things like not moving
around if you can help it.

I had a little bit more
flexibility with Spike,

and some of it I learned by
getting my head chewed off

by De Niro or something
like that.

I would get yelled out
by the best.

The summer after "Knightriders,"
George asked me back

to photograph the making of
"Creepshow,"

and Hal Holbrook and I became
great pals.

We would sneak off on his
motorcycle

and fly ultralights over
Pittsburgh

to the dismay of the producers.

You know what they used
to say about Spencer Tracy?

Spencer Tracy was playing.

Spencer Tracy was...

They thought he was always
playing it very cool on the set

the way he would walk
around and kind of...

He was looking for his marks.

I think it's very apparent

when you look at James'
photographs,

oh, that's a James Hamilton
photograph.

I love his street photography,
and you know this.

and your photography
of children,

and your photography of dogs.

There's a delight that you have

in the world and how it works.

On street photographs,

you capture this split
second like, I don't know,

a lot of times it shows
almost a loneliness in people.

But also the choreography
of street life.

Now it's different

if you're using a camera and
not a phone.

In what way?

Because people
are used to...

Everybody takes...

Everybody taking pictures
with phones.

But if you have a camera,

it means you're a little
more serious about it.

Yes, I know.

I just went for a walk
in the park.

Yeah.

And I took my camera.

And two women and a
bulldog were right there,

and I stopped with the dog,

and one of the women say,
"Are your photographer?"

No, it's different.

And I said, "Yes."

She said,
"What do you take pictures of?"

Yeah.

So I said, "Life."

Yeah. Right.

The pictures that mean
the most to me

are the pictures that I was
so happy and lucky to find.

Yeah,
I think the best pictures,

it's always some little
thing that happens.

Very often that's the potion

And when you're
in the street,

that's gonna happen.

Yes.

And you have to be open
to anything happening.

I've been really
honing in on James' stuff

in the last couple years.

There's this one street work
that frigging blew my mind.

That shot could be
a Cartier-Bresson

It's just perfect.
The moment, the framing.

The wheel's there,
and the wheel's there,

and your eye goes nuts.

Everything about it is just

so perfect that it's
infuriating.

Even when I worked on a story

where we were running
through the streets,

'cause there was a demonstration
going on or a riot,

he could almost do it on the run,
decide where the frame is,

and when the picture
appeared, it was amazing to me

how it looked like somebody
had posed.

And then I love the fact that

every summer he's there
in the water

with his waterproof camera.

We're all out there in
the waves,

and he's standing in this
place, 'cause he's such a seal,

but he's there taking photographs,
and we're all going up.

We're all shooting up into
the waves.

But you know what that means
is that the wave is breaking,

and it's gonna break on him.

That's like when you talk about

how he's completely in
his photographic world

when he photographs.

And how journalists have
had to say,

"James, psst, there's a truck
coming down the street."

Only now,
when I look back at pictures,

I can kind of separate
the decades and the years.

Because my contact
sheets are like a diary.

So I can segment time that way.

I was really happiest when I
was working alongside a writer.

First of all,
most of them were my friends

or became friends.

Kathy and I did several
long-distance stories.

For you, I think
when we worked together,

we, maybe at the end
of the day,

kind of discussed what we
saw or what we felt about it.

And during the day, you're
almost on your own track.

I was just following
along with journalists.

I didn't create the story.

It's nothing like what you do.

Yeah, but you would shoot
the hell out of an event.

Like something like when we did

Operation Rescue
together in LA.

You shoot outside the clinic
when everybody's like

stopping the women from
going in to get abortions.

You go to Melody Tent

the Friday night that
they have the big rally

around the baby's coffin.

Yeah, you're following
the journalist,

but you're really
following the journalist.

You are all over that story.

One of the great
pictures that James took

for a story that mattered
a lot to me

was when I exposed a Nazi
war criminal

who was living secretly in
Westchester.

And then,
when he opened the door...

He went like this.

I was doing a lot
of investigative reporting

at that time, with Jack
Newfield and Wayne Barrett.

Wayne Barrett was
notoriously the toughest writer

at the Voice on politicians
or anybody.

We could actually force
a mayor out of office,

which we did in the case of
Koch, thanks to Wayne Barrett.

We went after Giuliani. We
went after all office holders.

I remember Wayne throwing
a pencil at Giuliani.

The first sort of big
assignment we did together

was the Philippines.

And I had never done any
farm reporting.

I had done
stuff in Central America.

I'd been to Haiti and
Honduras and Nicaragua.

After we came back from
the Philippines,

we both wanted to do the same
thing again.

And then the students began
this huge protest in Beijing.

And the day before we left,

the army assaulted the students
in Tienanmen.

We hooked up with these students
from Beijing University.

They thought they were
gonna be dead.

They all told me,
"The army is going to come

and kill all of us."

The government had set up
these makeshift morgues

around the city because
they killed so many people.

And we broke into a morgue
and unzipped body bags.

This was late at night,

and I was using a flash,
'cause I had to,

and that gave us away.

And so then we were chased
out of there.

And it was great to be with
Joe in a situation like that.

We sent the film back
to New York

via diplomatic pouch.

So The Voice got the film,
developed it,

and ran on the front page.

That was a big deal

Because nobody else had.

Nobody had pictures of
the dead except James.

It was on Monday night.

Monday night was closing night,

and David Schneiderman,
who was the editor then,

he came out of his office

and stopped to talk to some
people in the art department.

And then he said, "Well,
someone could do a picture

every week on the front
over the contents page.

That that would be good.

Do you know somebody
like that?"

I jumped.

I learned that from George,
to jump.

Well they gave me a title,

and they put it up there
like in a big marquee

and it said "Sylvia's
Plachy's Unguided Tour."

And that's why everybody
remembered it,

because whoever remembers
the little...

That's right.

Thing underneath the picture?

I wanted it to be a picture
that could be anything,

and that was the most wonderful
thing I have ever had.

That was the lure to
attract me away from The Voice

to go to New York Observer.

'Cause they offered
you an unguided tour.

They said you could do
two pictures a week there,

anything you want.

You were free
to choose whatever you wanted.

Yes.

- And they ran.
- How about that?

Did they
ever object to a choice?

Never.

How could they?

So Fred sent me out on my
very, very first assignment.

There's this notorious punk
rocker named G.G. Allin,

and he was known for
a couple things.

He wanted to die on stage.

He was also known to
drink laxatives

before he went on stage, and
he wore diapers sometimes

and he'd throw his loose
shit at you

in the audience.

So I went to this subterranean
club, and he had a diaper.

Luckily he didn't throw
shit at me.

But he was rolling around
on the ground,

and it was just nuts.

I was photograph...

I was photographing like...

Half using my camera
as a shield

in case something came at me.

We were provocative
with a cause.

Look, Tom Wolfe's definition
of journalism was,

"Do you believe people
live like this?"

That's always was my attitude.

Is there really
a performance artist

who shoves yams up her
butt, claiming poetry,

and then shits it out at
a nightclub

while declaiming this
remarkable verse,

this transformative,
terrifying verse.

Like watching Medea,
the Greek tragedy.

She was on the cover of
the paper.

And you
shot the photo, James.

It seemed like
an appropriate photo.

I mean, for Karen Finley.

Guys at the front of
the book,

the white boys were
the investigative journalists

were just absolutely furious

that they didn't see that
as that's what our paper is,

which kind of delighted
everybody else.

It was always about space.

Who's gonna get the more space?

But you work in both
sides, right?

I was doing pictures
for every...

In every aspect of the paper.

Portraits, features,
criticism, restaurant pictures.

Jim Walcott was the TV critic,

and they would send over these
handouts from the TV shows,

and all of them, they
were terrible pictures,

so I would shoot my own
pictures off the TV screen

and have fun with it.

So I was doing just about
everything you could think of.

There were so many
schools of art,

so to speak, practicing.

James was going to certain clubs
and hearing certain music.

I was going to different clubs
and hearing different music.

There was just so much
cultural activity,

some of which ended up sort
of being in conversation

with other facets of
that culture.

So there was all this
innovation going on.

The Voice created that
kind of cross pollination

that keeps replicating.

In the '80s you get people
like Greg Tate,

who had an original voice
that tons of people imitated.

But he was able to blend

what was something
personally meaningful to him

with why it had ramifications
for the rest of the culture.

AIDS changed the tenor
of the paper

and in a way made it
more militant.

We had to cope with this
epidemic that was in our midst,

and we were the epicenter of
the epidemic.

So a lot of emphasis
was placed on

questions of health
and mortality,

especially for young people.

There was this new
attitude of seriousness,

that you couldn't be disengaged
from the events around you.

I had never
photographed anyone

essentially on their deathbed,

but that's what I was doing in
some cases.

At first, I didn't know
how to approach it, really.

I had to be comfortable with
the person.

I had to make them feel
comfortable with me.

All of it had to be done
with care.

I think The Village
Voice must look handmade

to people who read it now,

compared to the kind of
slick, polished writing

and art that there is now.

But that's okay. That's
a different aesthetic.

It's just that there's a
loss and there's a gain,

and the gain is this
incredible flexibility

to make something perfect
in so many different ways.

But the loss is putting
your hands on something

and then creating it anew

so that it's a merger of aesthetics
that is uniquely yours.

Did having
that direction,

purpose with the assignments,
was that beneficial to you?

Oh, sure.

'Cause it was necessary
for me to communicate.

In a way that was the biggest
challenge,

is to make the work
lucid, clear

and appropriate to the story
and whatever job I was doing.

it was a challenge,
it was a lot of fun,

and I loved just taking
pictures for myself.

I never felt worn out by
the work, really.

The thing is you
would have super serious

important stories,

but you also would always
have a sense of

some of just the sheer joy
and oddity

and craziness of the world.

I think that mixture is so
important.

So much now, it's like we're
super serious or super shallow.

And I think we really need
this other sense of life

as being very wacky, fun,
joyful, heartbreaking.

When we were working
at The Village Voice,

it was before the computer,
mostly,

and so people would get up
from their desk

and go over to the other desk

and argue with someone
if they had a problem.

And everything was much more
personal, much more hands-on.

Then the computer came in,

and then I noticed that everybody became
more like robots,

and if you wanted to complain
to someone,

you sent them an email,

and everybody just looked
ahead of themselves,

and it was less open, and
nobody talked to each other,

nobody touched each other,
nobody yelled at each other,

nobody loved each other.

It was through a machine,
sanitized, clean and dead.

There can be no Bohemia
in Manhattan anymore

in an organized sense,
because it's too expensive.

So Bohemia is dispersed.

It's in 80 different places.

That's not the same.

And to me, that's almost
a political statement,

because it reduces the power
of Bohemia substantially

and makes it into another
commodity.

And so it's the commodification
of New Yorkness

that makes New York in
some way insufferable.

But I go to the Square
during the pandemic,

and lo and behold,
the kids are resplendent

in neo tie-dyes and blue
hair and all of that,

and it's incredibly
moving to me.

So there's still this
kernel in the Village,

and maybe in New York,
too, of the unmanageable.

And I think what the Voice
really stood for

above all else is
unmanageability.

Never knew what you would find
when you opened the paper.

Its positions were
completely unpredictable.

So that kind of
unmanageability, to me,

is a quality that maybe
New York still has.

You come here as a banker,

but you leave as some kind of
weird person

that you never were.

So I think everybody from
Hamilton to everyone else

who was at the paper
for any time

just became a different self
as a result.

They became new,

and they photographed their
new selves,

or they wrote about their
new selves,

and I think that's
very special.

I told you I worked with
Craig Claiborne, right?

You wanna see Craig Claiborne?

Come here.

He's even on a checkered
tablecloth.

I spent seven years
photographing the great chefs

who came to Craig's house

to cook for his
New York Times pieces.

Here's a shot with some
of his pals

on a particularly wild weekend.

I did manage to do a
lot of freelance work.

I was never a good
hustling for it.

It was usually when somebody
came to me.

I didn't love doing freelance,

because I no longer had
control over my work.

But Susan Vermazen was
the photo editor

at New York Magazine,

so she would call me often
for pictures.

Almost all of it was color,

and so I had a chance
to do much more color

than I normally would've done.

Because he was so
established at New York,

if I would say something like,
"You cannot crop this photo,"

they would listen.

But not always.

He did Jane Pauley, and
he did Denzel Washington.

And some people said that's
why Dinkins won the election,

because James did him so
sympathetically.

Oh, and Giuliani.
This wasn't a cover.

And when James got back,
he said to me

he reminded him of Boo Radley.

and Robert Altman,
that's another one,

and Altman never forgot him.

'Cause people who are
really smart

want James's look at things.

And then the preppy murder cover
became a very famous cover.

He was good-looking and
tall and rich,

so it was like all the elements
for a story

that was just being covered
to death.

So James went and shot him,

and the pictures came back,

and people thought he just
made him look so good.

He looks like a model.
It's like a GQ cover.

And it's like, no, it's not.

I was determined to
get beneath that surface,

because it was a very
polished surface.

I remember if you covered
up one side of his face,

he looked normal,

and if you covered up
the other side of his face,

he was psychotic.

Vanity Fair and a lot
of other publications

would call me to photograph
criminals for some reason.

A lot of murderers and
terrorists and people like that

and usually in jumpsuits
in prison.

And I was on death row to
photograph Henry Lee Lucas.

And George Bush commuted
his sentence,

and he didn't get
death in Texas.

That's hard to get out of.

Tienanmen Square led to
the London Sunday Times Magazine

asking me if I would go to Ethiopia
to cover the war there.

I told the Voice I'll be gone
a few weeks

and it turned into months,

because we were with a rebel
convoy in the middle of nowhere

and no way to communicate

with the outside world
or anything.

James for a while turned
into this type of person

that we got to know out
in the field.

They're adrenaline junkies,
and I had a little bit of that.

He had a lot of it.

It's hard to look at
a lot of those pictures.

There was death all around,

'cause I was covering
the famine as well.

We were driving overland
at night,

and I was in a petrol truck,

and there were mines all
over the place,

and then trucks were
exploded all along the route.

In a way I was sort of grateful
to be in a petrol truck,

because I knew it'd be fast.

The reason we drove all night

is 'cause the government
MiGs were not qualified

to bomb at night.

I was either taking pictures
recklessly,

I mean dangerously,

or I was running and not
thinking about taking pictures.

One time I was literally
being chased

by MiGs firing rockets.

It was a terrifying time.

We just wanted to be invisible.

But I had to take pictures
too, so.

But it was a very difficult
coming down from that trip,

'cause it was a long haul.

It takes a certain amount of
dedication.

- And experience.
- A lot of dedication

to do that, and I think it
would take over your life.

I can't imagine having a
partner and doing that.

Yeah.

Anyway, I'd never seen
that kind of horror in war.

I left the Voice sometime
in the late winter of '93.

Joe Conason had mentioned

that I'd be a good fit at
The Observer,

where he was working.

They offered me something
I could not refuse,

which was two pictures a week
that were anything I wanted.

Anything he wanted.

They ran very large.

It would be a picture
on page two

and then a picture on
page four.

You'd turn the page and
the second one would be there.

So in order to limit
myself a little bit,

once I took one picture,
I had to think of some way

the second picture would
relate to it in some funny way.

So that's what I would do to
make a game of it for myself.

He was always making puzzles,
you know,

and letting people figure
out what he was doing.

- That's right.
- It was really fun.

I was captivated by
The Observer.

It's hard to describe now

how much of a monumental
thing it was when it came out.

This pink paper, same color
as the Financial Times,

but so different.

It was a challenge to be
a photographer

on the salmon...

You're telling me.

I would dare say

The main thing I remember
about it,

I was reading "Sex
and the City,"

the Candace Bushnell column

that became the famous
TV series.

The column is fantastic.
The TV show is very different.

What struck me about it was,

on the front page of this
broadsheet,

you'd have a column
like "Sex and the City"

cheek by jowl with
politics, financial news.

It was social journalism,

and it was just as important
as the other stuff.

A few years later, Peter
Kaplan became the editor,

who was just a complete
force of nature

and really made the paper
into something bigger.

Peter, one of his
mentors was Clay Felker,

and what he had to offer
was real estate,

meaning on the page,

and great editing and wonderful
headlines.

I couldn't believe
the kind of stuff

they'd run on the front page.

For a moment, it was this
place where all these writers

could really do whatever
the hell they wanted.

I didn't really work
with writers so much there,

and it was almost entirely New
York based, New York stories.

The Voice was about New York
as well as many other things.

The things that Peter wanted
to cover was who's powerful?

What are they doing? What
are their plans?

Whether it's politics,
business, culture,

how does the power structure
really work?

Unlike the Voice, which was
sort of critical of the media

in a way that wasn't always
welcomed,

The Observer was kind
of the pet.

I mean, everybody in the media
in New York

read it every week.

Peter brought in some great
illustrators. Barry Blitt.

Drew Friedman.
- Great artists.

Yeah. Victor Juhasz,

Philip Burke and
Robert Grossman.

He had the best illustrating
staff in New York.

- We would never-
- On the front page,

Almost never run
pictures on the front page.

We would run...

There were no photographs
on the front page.

This was a bit of
a sore point.

Nobody knew I existed
as a photographer there.

James is quiet,
and I'm very talkative,

and I tend to Jabber on,

and that was always a problem

when I was interviewing people.

I mean, maybe it disarmed
some people.

And I would observe James
being silent

and how effective that was.

It was sometimes a reminder
to shut up.

I'd love to see him work,

and I grew up in '70s and
'80s New York,

and I always felt, yes, I
recognized that bit of grit

even in his most formal
portraits.

I was always surprised
at how slightly naughty

some of them would
turn out to be.

I would say there's a surprising number
of photographs

where the legs are...

There were the subjects
revealing

their most vulnerable part.

The mid to late '90s
was the era

when The Observer
really thrived.

We worked outta this crazy,
madcap townhouse on 64th Street,

and that was part of
the appeal.

Completely not up to fire code.

You'd walk in, and there was
a swirling marble staircase.

It was gorgeous. It was like
something out of a movie set.

Peter had a knack for
making you feel

like you were starring in
a 1930s screwball comedy.

I mean, what a way to live.

It was "His Girl Friday."

I felt like Rosalind Russell.

Yeah, don't worry.
I'm on the job.

The person that I connected
with there

was Peter Bogdanovich,

because they asked me to
photograph him,

and then we became
kind of friendly.

They wanted to have a
little picture of him

next to his column.

He would write about the DVD
of the week.

But it was a tiny picture,

and they would have my
credit there every week.

And I thought that's stupid.

But then I decided that I
would have some fun with Peter,

so I would tell them
the name of a character

from a film instead of my name.

But they would be as
obscure as I could make them

to amuse Bogdanovich.

And I didn't hear from
him about it

until one day he called me.

He said, "All right, all
right! Who is it?"

'Cause it was somebody that
he didn't recognize suddenly.

I was staying in a hotel
in Gramercy,

and I was told somebody's
coming from The Observer

to take your picture.

And I thought, "Oh, it's
gonna be one of those ones

right in in the inside
second page of The Observer."

I love those.

It's where you see
who's in town.

And for the first time
in my life,

I'm one of the people
who's in town.

A guy shows up. He said,
"Hi, I'm James."

He's very kind of gentle, and
he's sort of looking at me

and looking at the space, and
kind of guides me over here,

and everything's done with
a kind of light touch.

I don't get the sense he's
actively doing something

to set the mood.

He's just being himself

and watching what's in
front of his camera.

But we talk about movies.

And quickly I get...

I think he knows everything.

And at the end of it he says,

"You should come over one day,

and I'll show you
some of my..."

Because he told me I took a
picture of this...

So my normal reaction to
that would be,

"Thank you one.
Maybe one day we will."

But in this case I was like,
"Well, I'll see you tomorrow."

And so I went, and he's
living above the Reservoir Bar

on University Place,

and he's got a Jeep, and
it has a press pass on it.

He seems to be able to
park anywhere he wants.

And he's got this amazing spot

that's essentially he's
living in a dark room

filled with print,

and quickly I'm seeing Francois
Truffaut and Akira Kurosawa.

And also sort of reportage.
And I'm fascinated.

And he's also quoting
movies left and right,

and I'm trying to keep up.

And I know a lot of 'em,

but I don't know a lot of 'em.

And I remember thinking,

"This is James Stewart
in a 'Rear Window.'"

This is the guy.

And there are thousands of
these pictures.

And I felt like it's all one
body of work,

even though it's so many
kinds of things.

But he was an institution.

He's been a part of my
circle of New York friends

and New York life ever
since then.

Then, we liked him so much,

we said,
"Why do we need somebody else

to take pictures on our movies?

Why don't you do that?"

I'd rather have you document
our movie

like it's part of the city

rather than having someone
who does things

that the studio is telling
him to do.

So he took pictures on the set
of "The Royal Tenenbaums."

It was really fun to
watch him work,

because he was all over it.

He just was in control of
every aspect of the film.

I abandoned 35 millimeter
around 1985

and started working
with this guy,

which is Pentax 645,
which is a big camera.

And I would hold it like that.

But this is the sound it makes.

It doesn't have batteries in
it, but it's a real clunker.

It makes a really loud noise.

So I wouldn't shoot
while they were filming,

which most still people do.

I would run in at the end

and set something up
briefly, and then run out.

The thing is,
the old way on movie sets

was the camera's gonna
make a sound,

and so what you ended
up with was

a guy with a big blimped
camera with a long lens

who's meant to go over there,

taking pictures that are
essentially

something like still
frames from the movie.

Essentially he's photographing
movie stars

from the wrong camera angle.

James's approach was that he
was really more interested

in what was happening
around the set,

and to me,
that's what's worth getting,

so that's why I always
liked having him instead,

along with the fact that
we can wrap

and then we can go off and
have a drink somewhere.

Wes wanted me to make
photos for a lot of the props.

Book jackets.

Magazines.

Even an album cover.

We had a lot of fun with that.

And then I went to India
for "Darjeeling Limited,"

and Wes had his great
crew of actors

and my dear friend, Bob Yeoman,
who shoots all his films,

and Adrian Brody, who I
knew from the age of five,

because he was
Sylvia Plachy's son.

It's just much more fun

if I know the people
that I'm working with,

if they're friends.

I'm sure that I shoot more than
most still photographers do,

because subsequently people
would complain about it,

that I'm doing too much.

One of my very best
friends was Bill Paxton,

and he directed a film
called "Frailty,"

So I worked on that with him.

That was great.

We lived in across the hall
from each other in a motel,

and we would plot out
scenes every night.

Bill is a friend since
the early '70s.

He's like a brother to me.

Whenever I went to LA,

whatever I was doing,
I would stay with him.

So one night he said, "You
wanna come on my paper route?"

This was before he made it big,

and he was actually
delivering papers every night.

And he actually was the scout
on "Carrie."

He found that house.

He knew a lot of great haunts
and places to go in LA.

We went to a lot of
cemeteries and Keaton's grave.

And Bill is buried just
up the hill from there.

And then I worked with
Noah Bombach

on a film called
"The Squid and the Whale."

Noah would put me in his films,
little cameos, subsequently.

Some of the bears are not
well served.

The work is more intimate
than the space

Still feels weird.

I feel like my parents are
splitting up.

And then Wes put me in
his films too.

I put him in
the Royal Tenenbaums

because I liked the way
he looked.

He's photogenic, and he looked
like belonged in this house.

I figured he could probably
play bridge,

which is what he does in
the scene,

because he generally
knows how to do things.

And I feel like I thought
probably his mother played bridge.

"Life Aquatic" I had
a part as a photographer

and blew my line

in front of hundreds
and hundreds of extras.

I was a nervous wreck
doing that.

Captain Zi...

Captain Zissou,
can I get a shot of you

with Captain Hennessy?

Where?

Make it quick.

He's also in
"Fantastic Mr. Fox."

28 pine cones fired,
22 targets hit.

Decoy phase, go.

Every day I receive a
photograph from James,

and I put it in a
special file, Hamilton's,

and it's an incredible
ongoing document

of the times and places
of his life.

But when I think of
New York, my life here,

James was always a part of it.

I have a lot of experiences
of crawling into that Jeep

and buzzing around this place.

Not a comfortable way
to get around at all,

but you can get a lot done.

Most of my history
is living in New York,

and the people that pass
through are the portraits.

I think that's what I've
done mostly,

is document my life in
New York.

It's like a diary really.

I had met James in the '80s

when he photographed
Sonic Youth,

and it was for
a Village Voice piece.

I didn't know who he was.

I just remember being
somewhat kind of bratty

when I went over there.

I had a hat that I had
picked up on tour

that was just kind of terrible.

It was like a cap that said
"party till you puke in it,"

So I just loved wearing
this hat

because it was so offensive
and terrible

and I wore it for this shoot.

And James was, he was
very easy to deal with,

as most photographers can
be really persnickety,

but James was just kind of
very mellow,

and he kinda shot and
kinda shot.

At some point he just sort of
looked at me and said like,

"Let's lose the hat."

You've
done a few album covers.

The "Songs for Drella," I had
no idea you had done that.

You have to look at
those contact sheets.

You've got hundreds of
head shots of John Kale,

hundreds of headshot of
Lou Reed.

And then there's one shot

where Lou has a cigarette
like this,

and he has this great big
teethy smile.

Oh yeah. I remember that.

And it's just like, "What?"

I'm with the loop,
like, "What?"

He's smiling!

Lou Reed's smiling!
- He's smiling!

For a journalist!

Lou is like really sneering
in this one.

Well.

Classic.

I think this is long
before he was with Laurie.

I did some work on one of her
record covers, "Big Science."

And you shot her with Anne
Waldman at the Nova Convention.

I did.
That was way back.

She's like
a little kid.

How are
you thinking

you're gonna use these
in the book?

Full page, full bleed if possible,
without cropping them.

We never crop James
Hamilton's photographs.

Wow.

Never.

I didn't start out to be
a portrait photographer.

I sort of had to be,

because that's what a
commercial photographer was

in my area.

It was always journalism.

Anytime it was a portrait,
I just wanted James.

I didn't want anyone
else. It would be boring.

James sees who you are.

His portraits are so revealing.

He just had such a point
of view in every photo,

without you being hit on
the head with it.

You would just respond
to this film

like somebody punched you
in the chest,

grabbed your heart, twist
it, and take it back out.

Hamilton had this way of
being able to,

no matter what that person,

that phony moron we were
doing a story on

was trying to cover up all
these years,

Jimmy would get there,
and he'd take a picture,

and he'd reveal that one thing

that the guy had been
trying to hide.

I just took for granted
that, if we had 15 minutes,

James would get a great shot.

He just knew how to do that.

I think his imagination
actually saw a finished product.

With these junkets and
things like that,

when I would photograph film
people or theater people

or even music people,
the time was limited

that you had to create
something.

Doing portraits of celebrities
became a very

in and out, 15-minute process.

There were exceptions.

There was this great time
with Daniel Day Lewis

when "There Will Be Blood"
came out.

We were in a room together
for a long time

and talked much more than
I photographed.

Didn't he do that dance from...

Oh yeah, both of us,

we were talking about
"Treasure of Sierra Madre,"

and I said, "I love the moment
where Walter Houston

does that dance when he
finds gold,"

and so we both got up and
did the dance together.

I was thinking of James

in relation to a photographer
like Avedon

and his famous pictures
of the Chicago Seven.

They're so posed, even though
the actors are acting out,

the background is so evident

that there's
a self-consciousness

that James' photos don't have,

because there's a journalistic
element,

because he's not thinking
in gallery terms.

I prefer James, frankly,
because that combination is richer.

It was a lot of fun to photograph people
in my apartment,

because they were
always surprised

by the threadbare environment.

That was in my apartment.
This was in my apartment.

I love that.

Beastie Boys.

This was an assignment for
Vanity Fair,

having lunch with Liberace.

Lunch with Liberace.

Lunch, that was...

Raise your hand if you've
had lunch with Liberace.

A lot of them interested me

much more than just being
celebrities.

A lot of them I cared so
much about their work,

not particularly their image.

I wanted them to be portrayed
the way I wanted to see them,

wanted a stranger to know
something about them.

Besides Joni Mitchell, there
were only two occasions

where I was photographed
with a subject.

One was I went with
Jamaica Kincaid

to do an interview with
Salvador Dali,

and she photographed
me with him.

I set up the camera.

And then that picture of
Godard and me on the balcony.

He was very nervous
about being so high up,

so I stood next to him,

and he felt a little more
comfortable.

And Godard and Kurosawa a
meeting for the first time.

They're almost identically
dressed.

And I didn't ask them to
pose at all.

I just said,
"Stand over by the window."

And they both did this with
their hands.

We were told one day that
Jared Kushner

was gonna buy the paper.

I wasn't in on the inner
workings

of the office at all, really,

and I didn't know how
much it was gonna change.

And at first it didn't change
very much.

But then it just slowly turned

into this kind of
a business paper.

This guy had come in,
Kushner, and bought the paper

for reasons that were
extraneous to journalism.

He had no real interest in
journalism,

didn't know anything about it,
didn't really care about it,

which meant that everything
that was good about the paper

was going to disappear.

He wanted to create a
narrative about his family,

because his father had
just gotten out of prison.

I think Peter was optimistic
at first,

and Peter's innovation was,
quite boldly,

he decided he was gonna make
The Observer

into a tabloid rather than
a broadsheet.

The New York Post, that was
what Jared admired and knew.

Jared was also very alert
to sites like Gawker.

He wanted shorter articles.

So Peter, he really rallied.
He made it into a tabloid.

I was photographing a
lot of business people

and real estate people.

I was still doing a portrait
a week of anyone I wanted.

But it was becoming way
less interesting

because of the way the paper
had turned.

Who left first? You or me?

I can't remember
who left first.

Well, I got run over,
so that was...

I was hanging around for
the money, and it wasn't much.

Threatens
to feel like a metaphor

for print journalism
in general.

Well, you could certainly
look at it that way.

People don't remember it.

When I go and talk to young
journalism students now,

they have no idea what I'm
talking about.

It was just something in
the moment.

That's sort of what
journalism is.

A lot of journalism
doesn't hold up.

That's not what
journalism does.

It's the first draft
of history.

It could be a really
good first draft,

but it's not meant to last.

And James' photographs,

those are gonna last in
a different way.

So this is where it happened.

I was walking down Montague

to photograph her Corcoran
real estate office here.

I stepped off the curb.

Cadillac Escalade hit me
from behind. I went down.

And the wheel stopped
right here on my leg.

And the wheel of the Cadillac
Escalade is about that wide

and separated my foot
from my leg structurally.

And so I was lying in
the street,

and my very first thought was,

"Thank God I never have to
work at The Observer again."

That's how bad things had got.

My second thought was, "I
hope I don't have a limp."

And it was four separate
surgeries.

It was very tough on
both of us.

We were living on credit cards
very much for the whole time.

The only really fortunate
thing about that accident

was worker's comp kicked in.

And if that hadn't happened,

we would've had to sell
this place.

This was the end of my
journalism career.

I certainly couldn't
work for all those years

that I was laid up.

It was a bad time for
journalists everywhere,

and this was '09.

And it hasn't gotten any
better since.

It's continued to be bad.
In fact, it's gotten worse.

When I started,

we didn't even let
the ad people on our floor.

It was like church and
state, edit and advertising.

And by the time I left,
people were doing stories

in order to get
the advertising.

It's like, why even do it?

How could you say what
you really wanna say

if an advertiser's gonna
be offended?

They started shortening
all of the stories,

and I don't think it's
necessarily

because people no longer
read long pieces,

but that's what we were told.

By the way, if you're a freelancer,
you get paid per word.

People ask me to freelance
all the time,

sometimes for no money
whatsoever.

But definitely they gave
me these per-word rates

that were unbelievable.

"What do you mean 10
cents a word?"

It's just like,
"What can I do with that?"

The overwhelm of text
and image,

the economics of it don't work.

If there's so much text,

then of course the price
of it is gonna go down,

the quality is gonna suffer.

We were so lucky to work
during the times that we did.

The kind of leeway we had
to totally tell the story.

You didn't even have
the internet.

There was no reporting
by reading back then.

Reporting was shoe leather.

There are people right now
who are 18, 20, 22 years old

who want to do exactly
what it is that we did.

They wanna tell stories.

They wanna go deep
into a subject.

They wanna photograph
the hell outta something.

They've got all the talent and
all the hunger in the world.

And where is it for them?

Are we gonna get to the point

where nobody tells
these stories,

nobody reads them,
they don't exist?

I don't know, 'cause I don't
know where they will exist.

For a lot of us, we were
never gonna do anything else.

I didn't have an alternate
career.

I never even thought about
something else to do.

This was the only thing
that you were gonna do,

and it was make it or break.

Yeah. Yeah.

What do you
do with it all

at the end of the day?

What do you do with it all?

Yeah,

We bury it with us, like
the pharaohs.

I have a system, but I'm
not keeping up with it.

And there was no time,

because that was the middle of
our life, when we were busy.

I had a home. I had a child.

I just did what I had to do,

and there are all these
pictures that are...

Just sitting on contact
sheets.

They're sitting on contact
sheets and screaming.

That's true.

Saying,
"I'm here! Take me out!"

That's true.
And there's just no time.

I think once you had a pause,

you realized that you had
this giant body of work

that you had to start
looking at and cataloging

and thinking about where
it's gonna go.

That's what I did.

I went through my archives
to sort things out.

And it gave me time to
do the musician's book,

which I probably never
would've had the time to do.

James has these physical
objects, these souvenirs,

that is the preservation
of half a century or more

of New York City's greatest
moment, grittiest moment.

And right now they're all
just sitting in boxes.

They're not in a stock agency,

this gold mine of 65
years of New York City.

Not yet.

55 years.

55.

He'd always just wanted
to do what he wanted to do,

and he didn't really care
about fame.

I don't think he would've
turned it down,

but it wasn't like he
got an agent

or he was seeking out big
jobs or anything like that.

You have to be really
creative and entrepreneurial

to succeed with
photography now.

But he's anti-entrepreneurial

James's work, it's
refreshingly devoid of ego.

Let's put it that way.

During the internet age,

where a lot of photographers
were disseminating their work

into the public sphere,

James' work was just like
not seen at all.

Your social life got
in the way

of becoming an art star.

My hedonism got in the way
everything.

It totally did.

My whole career was all about
having fun, I have to say.

I wasn't interested in
putting pictures on walls.

I was interested in doing
the next thing.

Like many pictures that
James took,

like the pictures in China,

like some of the pictures
in the Philippines,

he should have won
a Pulitzer Prize.

For the presser picture,

it became a really important
photograph,

because it so captured
the kind of corrupt essence

of the teamsters and their
leadership.

What we came away with
was the satisfaction

of doing the work,
which was great.

- More than great.
- More than great.

But some of those pictures
deserve recognition

they did not get.

James really is a treasure,
I think.

And beyond his work, also,
is his approach to his work.

That is a very pure way
to approach what you do

and who you are.

And you think of all the things

that are in such short supply
these days:

value, actual value, honesty,

and, coupled with that,
integrity

and a kind of sense of fun.

James, he likes being alive.

He likes seeing life around
him. He likes looking at it.

He likes feeling it. He
likes investigating it.

He likes being on a story.

And whatever the story,

he goes with that same
seriousness, intensity.

And he's not looking to
just grab shit.

He's not looking to get
an image, sell an image.

He's looking to find, refine.

He's a good person to have
still around in this age.

The Voice is gone,

but James Hamilton is
still out there.

I'm always being reminded
of films.

I think about films a lot.

Films in my past and
my history.

Because they were very
important to me.

And I can take myself back to
being in the theater, even,

when I first saw a film.

I mean, they're anchors
for memories, which I love.

I always thought I was
either gonna be a painter

or a filmmaker when
I was young.

But I was never technological.

I never owned a camera.

And then the idea of doing
film intimidated me too,

because I was not a writer,

and I always thought that
I would have to write

whatever I filmed.

And again, the technology and
working with a lot of people.

It was not until I worked on
movie sets

that I really saw the most
fun job as the director,

but also the most
challenging, intimidating,

and the farthest away from
the way I am,

which is working alone.

And then,
when I did finally buy a camera

and started shooting, I
just was totally content

with the moment and
stories made up of moments.

So I didn't really feel
like I needed

to pick up a video camera
or get a movie camera.

I loved the still.