“Club 57, where are you?” Harvey Wang's Photographs of the Legendary East Village Club 1979-1983 Riviera Gallery, July 9-31, 2005 Written by Christina M. Hinke Color photos by Christina M. Hinke Black and white exhibition photos by Harvey Wang

John Sex

“Club 57, where are you?” depicts a zeitgeist of past East Village life through the lens of photographer Harvey Wang. More than twenty years have passed since the days when Harvey hung out with the likes of Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, John Sex, and Klaus Nomi at Club 57. So he wanted to share that world with the New Yorkers of today, the New Yorker’s whose “free spiritedness is lost,”

Ann Magnuson outside Club5 7 on ElvisNight, 1980

The show was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn at the Riviera Gallery, an art gallery located down a street laden with broken buildings and weed-filled, cracked sidewalks. On opening night, the room was steamy, like a subway vent in the middle of summer. But steam aside, the modest room was packed, filled with the young and the old, all excited to view Wang’s photos and be transported to the New Wave era.

Outside Club 57

I saw two women, April Palmieri and Deb O’Nair, being taken back in time to the days when they partied at the now defunct club. Having no idea they were captured by Wang’s lens, they looked at photographs of their younger selves. In "Playboy Bunny Lounge Night: Barbie and the Heftones perform at the Mudd Club, 1980,” April Palmieri dances with a mock up of the World Trade Center on her head. Deb McNair smiles as she sees a larger-than-life poster-sized image titled, “Ann Magnuson and Deb O'Nair, Lady Wrestling Night 1980.” On the night of the opening, Deb wore a psychedelic pink dress which matched the color on the poster's border.

Boy Bunny Lounge Night
Barbie and Hefones perform at Mudd Club,1980

The Club 57 photographs are all shot in black and white. Also in display, are fourteen eleven by fourteen inch silver gelatin photographic prints of city life, such as photographs of the Son of Sam, Reagan, CBGB’s and a depressed East Village.

Harvey Wang’s photographs depict a subculture of people who differentiated themselves from the norm through their style and music. Like the past countercultures of the Bohemians and the Beat Generation, this New Wave group of artists, musicians, performers and fashion designers sought a place to express their non-conforming lifestyle. Wang captured a Club 57 (and the Mudd Club) where East Villagers went to laugh, live-it-up and create dreams. This lifestyle seems lost today in a world of designer labels, blackberries and the pervasive it’s-all-about-who-you-know attitude.

Ann Magnuson, Wendy Wild as Barbie and the Heftones at the Mudd Club,1980	Klaus Nomi,1980

 

Photographer Harvey Wang’s thirty year career has focused on portraiture. He has published four books and has another one in the works. Wang chooses people as his subject, because as he says, “It’s a passport to other lives.”

For more information about the artist, log onto: www.harveywang.com/club57.htm