Alan Kleinberg | Portraits: 1976 - 79 by OUTLET Fine Art

AL AN KLEINBERG

PORTRAITS 1976–79

E S S AY B Y A N D R E A C O D R I N G T O N L I P P K E

Elaine Grove, 1976 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Wendy Goodman, 1978 Gelatin Silver Print Sands Point, NY

John Head, Melissa North and Dirk Wittenborn, 1977 Gelatin Silver Print Southampton, NY

Ellen, 1977 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Stephen Maniello, 1977 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Stephanie Bachelor, 1979 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Peter Marino, 1978 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Josephine McNally, 1979 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Friedrich Moeller, 1979 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Tina Lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Hotsky, 1979 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Julian Schnabel, 1979 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Terence Sellers, 1979 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Dirk Wittenborn, 1978 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Isabella Rossellini, 1976 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Eric Mitchell, 1979 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Rebecca Wright, 1978 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Peter, 1979 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Jane Nisselson, 1979 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

Heiner Friedrich, 1979 Gelatin Silver Print New York, NY

F I RE C RE AT E S F I RE : AL AN KLEINBERG’S PORTR AITS By Andrea Codrington Lippke

New York in the late 1970s was a place of geographical and cultural compression. While the city itself was the largest in the country, the area comprising Downtown Manhattan—home to the majority of artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers living in the city—measured just twelve blocks wide and thirty blocks long. In The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984, writer and performance artist Eric Bogosian remembers the resulting creative atmosphere as one of “spontaneous combustion”: Everyone watches everyone else. Everyone listens to everyone else. And so it starts…. Like a string of firecrackers getting lit, inspiration triggers ambition, which incites socialization and sex, which fires off jealousy, which fires off competition and more inspiration. It was like a fire that creates more fire, until no one’s sure how it got started in the first place. Like a freeze-frame on the fuse, the photographs of Alan Kleinberg capture the people who created that heat—the artists, models, writers, architects, editors and filmmakers of the day, many of whose work continues to have resonance more than three decades later. In contrast to his fly-on-the-wall views onto the drugs-and-drag glory of New York high life, Kleinberg’s portraits bear a kind of odic stillness—even if it is the stillness of a hurricane’s eye. Isolated in time and space from their future selves—from blockbusting careers and multiple marriages, occasional addictions and inevitable aging—his subjects are potential personified.

Here is Isabella Rossellini, age 24, hands folded in front of her like a modest Italian schoolgirl, her beauty nascent but still blurred by youth; and a pensive Julian Schnabel—at 29, closer in time to his years as a short-order-cook than to the art-star bluster of the ’80s. Unrecognizable in a white Lacoste shirt and belted khaki pants is a fresh-faced architect named Peter Marino, just a few years after launching his career with design commissions from Andy Warhol but decades from donning the all-black leathers that broadcast a bombastic bad-boy persona. Not everybody is instantly recognizable, of course. There are those scenesters who were part of the whirling world for a moment before spinning out to lives beyond New York: the appropriately named Tina L’Hotsky, remembered by the Village Voice as “Queen of the Mudd Club” in the 2008 obituary that reported her death in Pasadena of breast cancer; or Terence Sellers, Downtown’s most renowned dominatrix, now an author and psychologist living in remotest New Mexico. Still others are culture makers who never sought the limelight, but worked steadily behind the scene to report on it—like style editor and journalist Wendy Goodman and novelist Dirk Wittenborn. Far from the paparazzi’s predatory zoom lens—or the mannered stagings of celebrity portraitists like Annie Leibovitz—Kleinberg’s photos are intimately in media res, in part because the people he depicts were usually his friends or friends of friends. “I had the opportunity to quietly make photographs of people who might not like to be photographed,” he admits, “because I wasn’t the kind of person who would gossip.” It was in this spirit of trust that Dia cofounder Heiner Friedrich playfully twists himself into a pretzel to make his young son laugh or the faunlike, androgynous dancer Rebecca Wright sits for the camera topless. Interestingly, the most intimate portrait in this selection, a nude of Kleinberg’s own wife, Ellen, is also the most distant. Posed against a wall, arms lifted and head turned away from the camera, Ellen’s anonymous body mirrors the vase that stands starkly on a small cabinet beside her.

The startling fact that Kleinberg’s substantial body of work has never been publicly exhibited is in part testament to his sense of confidentiality. But it also suggests the humility of a photographic autodidact who was informally tutored by such 20th-century masters as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and Saul Leiter. Kleinberg’s exposure to such photographers came through his first career as a hairstylist at the celebrity salon founded by Kenneth Battelle, famous for creating the hallmark coifs of Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe and Diana Vreeland. It was Vreeland who connected Kleinberg to Avedon when she hired him to do the hair on a shoot for Vogue. Other photographers soon followed. “I was doing hair for Irving Penn,” he remembers. “I was fortunate to observe Penn in the studio. Over the years I became close friends with Gordon Munro, Penn’s studio manager and assistant. He taught me everything about developing photos. I used to stay in there for fourteen hours a day and work.” Kleinberg was able to leave the salon for a career in photography after an art director at The New York Times Magazine hired him to shoot a spread on new hairstyles for the publication, a commission that soon led to fashion shoots for a number of leading publications and an ever-widening circle of friends and collaborators, from model Lauren Hutton and singer Nancy Sinatra to Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels and director Jim Jarmusch. In this wildly social scrum, a few people proved pivotal to Kleinberg’s development as a photographer. Marvin Israel, the artist and art director of Harper’s Bazaar and Mademoiselle and a champion of new photographers played a crucial role in prompting Kleinberg to pursue a more humanistic approach to photography. Some of the portraits shown here, in fact, were shot using a Mamiyaflex camera Israel loaned to Kleinberg. In typical fashion, even the camera had a culturally significant provenance: it once belonged to Diane Arbus.

AL AN KLEINBERG Alan Kleinberg was born in the Bronx in 1942, the son of a Jewish comedian. His interest in photography began as a teenager, when one of his friends bought a Leica camera. “It looked like the greatest thing I ever saw in my life,” Kleinberg remembered. After graduating from high school, Kleinberg trained as a hairdresser in Scarsdale, New York. In 1964, he joined the hair-and-makeup crew of the Broadway touring production of Camelot. When he returned to New York, newly married and broke, he walked into the Manhattan salon of Kenneth Battelle and asked for a job. At Kenneth Salon, whose high-profile clients included Jackie Kennedy and Nancy Sinatra, Kleinberg got his first taste of New York society. He bought his own camera and began photographing street life after his shift. Through Kenneth, Kleinberg was hired as a studio hairdresser for Glamour, Mademoiselle, Vogue, The New York Times, New York Magazine and Theater. Working with notable photographers such as Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and Saul Leiter, he learned how to handle a camera and develop his own film. He credits Leiter in particular, along with Louis Faurer, with influencing his approach to photography and his interest in human subjects. In the early 1970s, Kleinberg left Kenneth to pursue photography full-time. Behind the camera, he shot fashion spreads for The New York Times Magazine, Mademoiselle, New York Magazine, Details and the original Interview. He also photographed the installation and opening of Avedon’s 1978 retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kleinberg’s ties to the fashion world and his expanding circle of friends gave him access to New York’s celebrity nightlife and the downtown scene in hangouts like The Mudd Club and Max’s Kansas City. On 35mm black-and-white film, he captured the intersecting social worlds of Andy Warhol, Bianca Jagger, Gerard Malanga, Cheryl Tiegs, Lauren Hutton, Kathryn Bigelow, David Hockney, Julian Schnabel, Diana Vreeland, Karl Lagerfeld and others.

His work as a photographer gave him the opportunity to produce music videos and films. In 1984, he partnered with Academy Award-winning director Zbigniew Rybczyński to produce two short experimental videos for NBC’s The New Show. Rybczyński and Kleinberg also produced music videos for Grandmaster Flash, Chuck Mangione and Rickie Lee Jones. Their 1984 video for The Art of Noise single “Close (to the Edit)” won MTV Video Music Awards for Most Experimental Video and Best Editing. Kleinberg’s work with Rybczyński got him noticed by Jim Jarmusch, who hired him to produce the motion picture Down By Law. The film won a Cannes International Film Festival Award and opened as the feature film during the 1986 New York Film Festival. During this period, Kleinberg also produced music videos for Paul Simon and Talking Heads, including the 1988 Grammy-nominated Storytelling Giant, a compilation of Talking Heads’ music videos. Later, Kleinberg served as touring photographer for Simon and Garfunkel’s 1994 world reunion tour. Kleinberg’s work is archived with the Richard Avedon Foundation and other private collections. He currently lives in lower Manhattan and continues to develop new projects.

AL AN’S CIRCLE OF FRIENDS p. 3: Elaine Grove New York, NY Kleinberg met Elaine Grove while working as a studio hairdresser for fashion magazines. He remembers her as “one of the really remarkable models.” At a time when Cheryl Tiegs set the standard for beauty, Grove stood out with her distinctive beatnik look. Grove now works as a painter, sculptor and illustrator in East Hampton.

p. 7: John Head, Melissa North and Dirk Wittenborn Southampton, NY “I call them the Deckadettes,” Kleinberg says of the trio who stand on the deck of a rented house in South Hampton. John Head is a television producer who worked for Saturday Night Live in the mid-1970s and became a close friend and advisor to SNL creator Lorne Michaels. Melissa North is an interior designer and a member of the British upper class. Kleinberg’s entrée to their circle was through his friend Dirk Wittenborn, a novelist and screenwriter, who invited Kleinberg to many parties. “It was very exciting for me to come out of the Bronx and bump into these kinds of people and learn about what their lives were like,” says Kleinberg.

p. 5: Wendy Goodman Sands Point, NY Wendy Goodman and her sister, Tonne Goodman, both built careers in the magazine industry. A former model, Tonne is now a fashion editor and stylist for Vogue. Wendy is the design editor for New York Magazine. Kleinberg got to know them at the magazines while working as a hairdresser.

p. 9: Ellen New York, NY Kleinberg married his second wife, Ellen, in 1977. An art director for Vogue, Ellen introduced Kleinberg to influential artists and friends, including Vincent Fremont, Vice President of Andy Warhol Enterprises. Later, Fremont introduced Kleinberg to Andy Warhol at the Factory.

p. 11: Stephen Maniello New York, NY John Duka worked as a style reporter for The New York Times from 1979 to 1985. He later co-founded Keeble Cavaco & Duka, a public relations and advertising agency specializing in life style and fashion, and contributed to magazines like Vanity Fair, Elle and Vogue. “He’s perfect as a model,” says Kleinberg. “There are certain types of people who appeal to me. They’re looking directly at me.”

p. 15: Peter Marino New York, NY Peter Marino began hanging around the Factory as a young architect in the 1970s. He got his first commission from Andy Warhol—a renovation of Warhol’s townhouse on East 66th Street. Later, when the Factory moved from the Decker Building to 860 Broadway, Warhol hired Marino to design the space. Warhol’s patronage led to other important commissions, including the apartment of Yves St. Laurent and Pierre Bergé in the Pierre Hotel, where this photograph was taken. Today, Marino is known for his famous clients—luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Fendi, Dior—as well as his love of leather.

p. 13: Stephanie Bachelor New York, NY Stephanie Bachelor worked at the Broadway Screening Room on the fifth floor of the Brill Building. Kleinberg met her there while working at Broadway Video, the production company founded by Lorne Michaels. Michaels later commissioned Kleinberg to photograph the 1982 Columbia Space Shuttle launch for the Broadway Video offices. Kleinberg’s work for Michaels led to further opportunities in film and television production.

p. 17: Josephine McNally New York, NY Josephine McNally is the younger sister of New York restaurateurs Keith and Brian McNally. Kleinberg remembers when the brothers first came to New York from London in the late 1970s. At the time, Keith served as the maître’d at the Greenwich Village restaurant One Fifth, and Brian worked behind the bar. The restaurant attracted a crowd of artists and the crew from Saturday Night Live, who later followed the McNallys to The Odeon and anointed Keith “the restaurateur who invented downtown,” according to The New York Times.

p. 18–19: Friedrich Moeller New York, NY Art patron Heiner Friedrich asked Kleinberg to photograph his family in their home, where his son, Friedrich, posed for Kleinberg on the floor.

p. 23: Julian Schnabel New York, NY Julian Schnabel is an artist and filmmaker who gained attention in the 1980s for his “plate paintings”—large-scale paintings set on broken ceramic plates. Kleinberg met Schnabel in the 1970s at the Mary Boone gallery in Chelsea. “We were very different from one another, and we hit it off right away. I spent a lot of time with him, and through him I met a lot of people. He’s very genuine. You look at him, and that’s who he is.”

p. 21: Tina L’Hotsky New York, NY Tina L’Hotsky was an artist, performer, and a fixture of the Mudd Club, where she was “one of the most popular people,” says Kleinberg. A crossroads for downtown culture, the Mudd Club attracted an eclectic crowd of punks, no-wavers and A-list musicians, along with artists, filmmakers and fashion designers. At home among the avant-garde, L’Hotsky hosted decadent, end-of-the-world theme nights— nuclear warheads and Marie Antoinette—and she was soon known as “Queen of the Mudd Club.” In the early 1980s, L’Hotsky moved to Los Angeles where she acted in Kathryn Bigelow’s first feature, The Loveless, and other independent films.

p. 25: Terence Sellers New York, NY Kleinberg met writer Terence Sellers through the painter Duncan Hannah. Hannah and Sellers worked on several projects together, including Amos Poe’s 1978 film The Foreigner, which featured no-wave regulars such as Patti Astor, Debbie Harry and Eric Mitchell. Sellers’ short fiction and novels document the ambitions, excesses and abuses of New York’s art and literary crowd during the 1970s and ’80s. Her novel The Correct Sadist: The Memoirs of Angel Stern draws on her experience as a professional dominatrix to explore themes of sexual dominance, submission, bondage and discipline. Her diaries, manuscripts, letters and photographs from this period are collected in New York University’s Fales Library Downtown Collection.

p. 27: Dirk Wittenborn New York, NY Dirk Wittenborn is a screenwriter and novelist who started writing in the early 1980s while working at Saturday Night Live. He was “a wildcat of a guy,” remembers Kleinberg. “He could do just about anything he ever wanted. And he had a good sense of humor. Very funny.” The two of them met in the fall of 1976 at a Greenwich Village restaurant and bar called The Local. (The chef at that time was Julian Schnabel. The owner was Mickey Ruskin, whose other downtown hangouts included Max’s Kansas City and One University). Through Wittenborn, Kleinberg got to know Robert and Betsy Miller, who owned the Robert Miller Gallery on Fifth Avenue (Betsy was Wittenborn’s older sister). He also got to know the James L. Johnson family (Wittenborn’s other sister, Gretchen, married the Johnson & Johnson heir). “They liked me to be around because I photographed all the time. This whole world is a circle of friends,” says Kleinberg.

p. 29: Isabella Rossellini New York, NY Kleinberg met Isabella Rossellini through his friend Joe Daly, who married Rossellini’s halfsister, Pia Lindstrom (their mother was Ingrid Bergman). Kleinberg remembers holiday parties in the family’s home: “It was like a schooling. I observed. If I met someone, and there was something I could learn from them, then I was very satisfied.” p. 31: Eric Mitchell New York, NY Kleinberg remembers Eric Mitchell from the Mudd Club, where Mitchell was part of the underground film scene. His films, such as Kidnapped, Red Italy, Underground USA and The Way it Is or Eurydice in the Avenues, played an important role in the no wave cinema movement during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. He interacted with East Village regulars James Nares, Patti Astor, Lydia Lunch, Debbie Harry, Richard Hell, Steve Buscemi, John Lurie and Jim Jarmusch. Kleinberg later worked with Jarmusch, producing his 1986 film Down By Law.

p. 33: Rebecca Wright New York, NY Rebecca Wright was a dancer and an actress in underground films on the Lower East Side. “I met her on Canal Street outside an art supply store,” remembers Kleinberg. “She was in a little convertible. I asked her about the car, and we started talking, and then her boyfriend came out. They were punky kind of people, downtown folks. He was in a band that played at CBGB. We just kind of got to be friends.”

p. 39: Heiner Friedrich New York, NY Heiner Friedrich is an art dealer and collector of minimalist and conceptual art. With Helen Winkler and his wife, Philippa de Menil, Friedrich established the Dia Art Foundation, whose permanent collection includes work by Joseph Beuys, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Agnes Martin and Andy Warhol. In 1979, Friedrich invited Kleinberg to photograph his family in their home. “I took a picture of the three of them, the wife, him and the child. After it was all over, the little boy wanted to take a picture with my camera. Heiner turned around, and he did that for the boy.”

p. 35: Peter New York, NY p. 37: Jane Nisselson New York, NY Kleinberg met Jane Nisselson through a mutual friend and photographed her in her West Village apartment. At the time, Nisselson was a writer and art reviewer. She later worked as a software designer before founding her film and design studio, Virtual Beauty.

This catalogue is published on the occasion of Alan Kleinbergâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s exhibition Out All Night at OUTLET Fine Art, Brooklyn, May 9â&#x20AC;&#x201D;June 1, 2014. www.outletbk.com Executive Editor: John Silvis Concept: Ramon Garcia, Andrea Codrington Lippke, Nicole Miller, John Silvis Essay: Andrea Codrington Lippke Contributing Editor: Nicole Miller Designer: Patricia Fabricant Image Reproduction: Ramon Garcia, Matthew Hillock Copy Editor: Rebecca Maker Special thanks to Susan Forristal for her biographical insights and guiding support for the book and exhibition. All images are the copyright of Kleinberg and Partners, LLC.