Bøger udgivet af Damiani

"The real charm of Byways isn't playing spot-the-location as Deakins dabbles between takes, but the window it opens onto his youthful eye. You can trace his drive from an early age to catch the light at its best - or wait for it - all night if necessary." - The Telegraph "...his first monograph, Byways, looks not to his revered cinematography career, but his decades-long habit of taking still photographs. Among them are breathtaking landscapes and moments of stillness, interspersed with photographs imbued with wit thanks to the playful possibilities of scale, framing and timing. It's the kind of dry humour that sits passers by in conversation with monuments and miscellaneous objects in the street, or captures a canine rendition of Cartier-Bresson's seminal image Behind The Gare Saint-Lazare. - Creative Review "Candid close-ups, wide-angle landscapes, and dynamic long exposures, his monochrome photographs display a variety of approaches and techniques, yet first and foremost, testify to the remarkably perceptive artistic gaze that has seen him nominated for an Oscar on fifteen separate occasions (winning twice). Thoughtful, poetic, and profoundly arresting, they display his distinct enigmatic sensibility, and presented for the most part with little or no information or context (index aside) form a compelling visual soliloquy that conveys with great eloquence, the profound power of the still image." The Independent Photographer "An intimate introduction to the man behind the lens" - The Times Portraits and landscapes from the cinematographer famed for his work with Sam Mendes and the Coen brothers This is the first monograph by the legendary Oscar-winning cinematographer Sir Roger Deakins, best known for his collaborations with directors such as the Coen brothers, Sam Mendes and Denis Villeneuve. It includes previously unpublished black-and-white photographs spanning five decades, from 1971 to the present. After graduating from college Deakins spent a year photographing life in rural North Devon, in South West England, on a commission for the Beaford Arts Centre; these images are gathered here for the first time and attest to a keenly ironic English sensibility, also documenting a vanished postwar Britain. A second suite of images expresses Deakins' love of the seaside. Traveling for his cinematic work has allowed Deakins to photograph landscapes all over the world; in this third group of images, that same irony remains evident.

Critic and curator Jeppe Ugelvig recounts a little explored near-history of art/fashion hybridity through the genre- defying practices of Bernadette Corporation, Susan Cianciolo, BLESS and DIS, exploring their experimental approaches to fashion production between the art and fashion worlds in a time of radical societal change. Through a rich selection of rare and previously unseen photographs and ephemera, the book depicts fashion work in all its exhilarating complexity, tracing it from the atelier of the garment-maker to the post-production editing suite of the fashion photographer. Ugelvig¿s comprehensive account connects a mythological 1990s generation of collaborative, DIY fashion producers in New York, Paris and Berlin to the digital and increasingly corporate systems of fashion of the 2010s, where aesthetic activities such as styling and creative directing have become ubiquitous. From the dystopian brand-hacking of Bernadette Corporation to the museum pop-up stores and early sneaker collaborations of BLESS, the book shows how artists not only manage to repeatedly subvert fashion¿s frenzied systems, but prototype new forms of aesthetic entrepreneurship.

Toiletpaper is an artists¿ magazine created and produced by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, born out of a passion or obsession they both cultivate: images. The magazine contains no text; each picture springs from an idea, often simple, and through a complex orchestration of people it becomes the materialization of the artists¿ mental outbursts. Since the first issue, in June 2010, Toiletpaper has created a world that displays ambiguous narratives and a troubling imagination. It combines the vernacular of commercial photography with twisted narrative tableaux and surrealistic imagery. The result is a publication that is itself a work of art, which, through its accessible form as a magazine, and through its wide distribution, challenges the limits of the contemporary art economy.

An up-close portrayal of late-'90s London's many music scenes, from the pages of Sleazenation and beyond In the late 1990s, as a graduate from art school, the British photographer Ewen Spencer began making pictures for Sleazenation, in particular for the infamous listing pages at the rear of the magazine that were called "Savoir Vivre." The images were made in both black and white and color, and were immensely candid and full of characters that seemed to be everywhere at that time. London was at the epicenter of a cultural boom in this period. Small clubs, parties and discos were plentiful in venues from North to South, and Spencer was in a minicab and night bus taking in all the scenes-from Northern Soul, Acid House, Jungle and Garage to Nu Metal, South London blackout clubs and more. Spencer captures an era filled with love, lust and messy authenticity.

It was in 1978, during my first summer of making portraits while using an 8x10 inch large format camera, that I found myself drawn to photographing redheads. I have often been asked; 'why redheads,' and I've often felt it was because in summer redheads seem to bloom in the sun more gloriously than the rest of us. But it also might have been my living far out on the tip of Cape Cod, surrounded by all the blue light of sea and sky, which made me pay more attention to the flamboyant qualities of redheads. Their hair and the exotic markings of their skin in sunlight became even rosier and more astonishing in that blue atmosphere. Redheads, like film itself, are transformed by sunlight. It seems natural to me now that I would have paid attention to this new phenomenon as it appeared within the larger subject of the Cape itself. After making more than 50 portraits that first month, in which at least 30 were of redheads, I understood that this was an impulse to be taken seriously. I ran an ad in the local paper, the Provincetown Advocate: "REMARKABLE PEOPLE! If you are a redhead or know someone who is, I'd like to make your portrait, call...." They began coming to my deck, bringing with them their courage and their shyness, their curiosity and their dreams, and they shared their stories of what it was like to be a redhead. They spoke of the painful remembrances of childhood, the violations of privacy and name calling-"Hey, red," "freckle face," "carrot head." They also shared with me their sense of personal victory at having overcome this early, unwanted celebrity, and how like giants or dwarfs or athletes they had finally grown into their specialness and by surviving had been ennobled by it. You could say that they had been baptized by their own fire, and that their shared experience had formed a "blood knot" among them. I had begun making portraits with the intention of photographing ordinary people. But redheads are both ordinary and special. Their slender slice of the genetic pie accounts for only 2 or 3 percent of the world's population. As different as redheads are in terms of nationality and religion, they often give the appearance of a strong familial connection. My way of making portraits is not by getting down on my hands and knees, nor climbing high on a ladder, nor getting into bed with a celebrity, but simply standing eye to eye with anyone has found their way to me, young or old. I need only one or two sheets of film and the patience to see it through. This new edition of 'Redheads' will have a number of new and previously unseen portraits.

Hometown collects a series of suburban landscape photographs taken on Long Island between 1973-1980 by Joseph Szabo. Sharing the same DNA as his Teenage and Almost Grown series, Szabo‿s Hometown images conjure up an instant nostalgia, recalling fond memories of Szabo‿s childhood and adolescence in suburbia. Szabo explains, “The Hometown scenes reminded me of places I knew from my youth, places that I saw on my way to school, church, or the museum. They struck an emotional chord in me, one that is hard to put into words but that revealed their connection to my own past. In that sense, Hometown is autobiographical.â€?Building on his past work, Hometown gives context to the suburban lives that Szabo has documented so effectively for almost forty years.

Issue 13 of Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari's accessible image-based artists' magazine that challenges the limits of the contemporary art economyToilet Paper is an artists' magazine created and produced by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, born out of a passion or obsession they both cultivate: images. The magazine contains no text; each picture springs from an idea, often simple, and through a complex orchestration of people it becomes the materialization of the artists' mental outbursts. Since the first issue in June 2010, Toilet Paper has created a world that displays ambiguous narratives and a troubling imagination. It combines the vernacular of commercial photography with twisted narrative tableaux and surrealistic imagery.

The car is such an integral part of American culture that it has shaped our largest cities, inspired our best songs, played leading roles in films and books, and when it comes right down to it, has guided the American soul. Over the course of a half a century, Winter captured the American-ness of the car but, intriguingly, he also found a more global spirit, with pictures from Spain, Italy, China, etc. Winter's photographs feature the cars as well as the people in them, on them, and around them. And that's really where the fascinating friction happens because his images aren't simply about the cars themselves but, rather, they focus on the relationship between person and machine. Winter understood that how people relate - physically relate - to cars makes for evocative, emotional pictures, and his frames turn the car itself into a stage upon which owner and passenger and passersby perform. Consequently, there is much to consider in Winter's images: gender, geography, history, race, and class, among others. His pictures are nuanced, meaning that the cars often aren't the "hero" of the fame but rather an integral part of the stage upon which a drama quietly unfolds. And because these quiet dramas are universal - kids eating ice cream in the backseat, the top-down days of summer - Winter's pictures spark us to recall our own memories of our own days of adventure, romance, and speed.

Shiro Kuramata's work is replete with the ancient and fascinating history of Japanese decorative arts and the modern eagerness for Japanese simplicity and structural simplicity that has strongly influenced the dogma of "form follows function". More than the pieces themselves, what's important is their stories, which are connected by the continuous thread of non-materialisation. "My strongest wish is to feel free of all gravity, of all ties," he declared; "I want to float". This approach runs imbues all of his work with a kind of spiritual quest. His attempts to defy gravity find formal expression in transparent materials such as glass, acrylc and metal mesh, as well as in his experiments with the incorporation of light. By using these materials, he explores links between lightness and gravity, matter and non-matter. These relationships shimmer in his designs, producing a calm, contemplative atmosphere redolent with gentle aesthetic humanity and a refined sense of poetry. Azzedine Alaïa was a great admirer of Shiro Kuramata, who died in 1991, and organised an exhibition of his work at the Fondation Alaïa in 2005. Twenty years later, and for the first time ever, the Fondation Azzedine Alaïa has decided to celebrate one of the great designers of his time by associating Kuramata's work with a careful selection of pieces by Alaïa chosen for the materials, forms or approaches they share. The lurex knit of a simple gown responds to the knitted metal mesh of a chair, while the transparent acrylic of a shelf unit echoes the feather-light muslin of an haute couture creation. Some twenty pieces of furniture and exceptional objects designed by Shiro Kuramata (1934-91) are presented in the book. In parallel, almost twenty haute couture creations by Azzedine Alaïa demonstrate his poetry of form, his radical tailoring, his subtle choice of colour and his refined use of transparency. Imbued with a great sense of lightness, the pieces on display reflect an eagerness for abstraction shared by both artists. All the pieces by Shiro Kuramata and Azzedine Alaïa are from the collections of the Fondation Azzedine Alaïa.

Following the success of ToiletMartin PaperParr and ToiletAlex PaperPrager, the ToiletMiles PaperAldridge is the third magazine between the creative duo of Toiletpaper composed by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari and the acclaimed British artist and photographer Miles Aldridge. In the third editorial collaboration with Miles Aldridge, Toiletpaper combines their photographs with glamorous and elaborate mise-en-scènes images in a palette of vibrant acidic hues.

What if color could save us? In a gray world, where the clouds are gathering, this book invites you to a chromotherapia session. We'll treat you to lemon yellow, unlimited blue, bright red and sunny orange... Often disparaged, rarely taken seriously, color photography has nevertheless allowed artists to have a field day, get out their palette and paint the world. A number of artists have freed themselves from the medium's documentary status to explore the common roots of the image and the imaginary, flirting with the worlds of surrealism and pop. Maurizio Cattelan and Sam Stourdzé offer a rereading of the history of color photography through the twentieth century and the works of some fifteen artists who take us on a journey into vibrant, acidulous worlds.

"Jasmine Benjamin has drawn on her experience as a stylist for leading musicians to identify the diverse group of individuals who are defining the new LA style. She has gone to neighborhoods all over Los Angeles to interview and photograph these style innovators in their own clothes where they work and live. These people are not just style innovators but the influential talents who are also creating the new Los Angeles culture in art, music, fashion, and community activism."             -Jeffrey Deitch, gallery owner, New York and Los Angeles"It's easy to go to Los Angeles and be dazzled by the bright lights of Hollywood. But that's far from the case with Jasmine. She's plugged into the subcultures that have shaped the look and feel of LA from the fringes and has taken that distinctive, laid-back attitude into her work as a stylist. Her boundless curiosity has led her to the most unexpected corners of the city. When it comes to mapping out the true style of LA, I couldn't think of a better guide."            -Chioma Nnadi, Editor, Vogue.com & British VogueCITY OF ANGELS features more than 120 portraits of daring, expressive Los Angeles creatives shot in locations across the length and breadth of this vast metropolis. The book features iconic streetwear creators, free spirits from Topanga Canyon, surf and skate kids in Venice Beach, edgy Echo Park hipsters, Los Feliz vintage aficionados, shopgirls and -guys working at boutiques on Melrose, Chicano punks, K-Town cuties, Hollywood royalty, LGBTQAI fashion designers, Laurel Canyon bohemians, Black musicians and artists from South Central and Inglewood as well as from the affluent suburbs of Baldwin Hills and historic Leimert Park. Benjamin shot from Watts to Electric Avenue, Boyle Heights to Sunset Boulevard, Westside to Eastside, pavement to hilltop, alleyway to open field. This body of work perfectly juxtapose beauty with edginess, glamour with urban rawness.

'BACKSTAGE DREAMS is the first monograph by Eric Guillemain and offers a privileged insider's view into the captivating world of film sets. With prestigious clients such as Dior, Chanel, Guerlain, etc Guillemain's work spans the globe, capturing screen icons and stunning scenes in his striking black and white style. Initially inspired by his long-time role as a behind-the-scenes photographer for Peter Lindbergh, Guillemain's career in fashion photography naturally evolved. Rooted in his early days as a lyricist and rock singer, he brings a unique perspective to his art, in a subtle poetic tone, capturing exclusive and unrecorded moments with a touch of lucid dreaming. In 'BACKSTAGE DREAMS,' each photograph is a delicate vision, each frame a doorway to secret places and untold stories. It is a movie in a book, with a cast beyond belief-featuring iconic figures like Johnny Depp, Robert Pattinson, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jennifer Lawrence, Scarlett Johansson, Brad Pitt, Adam Driver, Charlize Theron, Léa Seydoux, Isabelle Huppert, and countless others. This meticulously crafted photo essay presents stunning behind-the-scenes pictures revealing the hidden beauty and complexity of the creative process. All emotions are captured on set, interlaced with gripping "snapshots in the mirror" as a recurrent motif, inducing viewers to dive into the depths of self, blurring the boundaries between reality and reverie. "BACKSTAGE DREAMS" is, in the end, a meditative yet powerful tribute to the lost sensation of dreaming-the precious stardust that once ruled the cinema world, aiming to reignite that magic of ancient storytelling through the lens of contemporary photography

The history of the book Invasion by Anderson Zaca has its origin with Zaca's invitation to the Fire Island Invasion in 2007, where he was captivated by the annual gathering of thousands of queer individuals and drag queens. With over three thousand images spanning almost two decades, Zaca's photographs serve as both an archive and a tribute to the transformative power of drag artists during this celebration. Shot in black and white film with a medium format film camera, Zaca's work combines traditional and contemporary elements, showcasing the intricate details of each scene and capturing the beautifully contradictory nature of the individuals involved. The Invasion, rooted in the rebellious spirit of the '70s gay liberation movement, represents a unique fusion of rebellion, glamour, and defiance of societal norms. Zaca's images convey a sense of reverence and aim to capture the political, sexual, and fiercely competitive expression of drag queens, highlighting the genius of their beauty and the elegance of this magical event.

JUNK - America in ruins: is a book of pictures of approximately eighty American cars, mostly from the 1950's and 1960's made in the junkyards of the western United States. The pictures are made in Nebraska, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma. This is a work of pure visual photography. The premise behind the work is that many things of beautify, sculptures, monuments and buildings, take on a new and added beauty as they deteriorate and become ruins. A pathos, a terrible sadness is added to their original beauty, and this is true of these automobiles, once the beloved machines of people and families that owned and drove them. The first car I remember being in was my father's two door Chevy coup. It was parked down in the street where I could see it down below from our first-floor corner Queens apartment. When you blew the Chevy's horn it played the first few notes of a John Philip Sousa's Stars and Stripes. From our home in Queens, my father, a physician would drive to his office on Lexington Avenue and 58th street in Manhattan, where, having MD plates, he could always find a place to park. On Sunday's when we drove upstate my brother and I would take turns leaning out the window to drop change into the wire basket as we entered the New York State Through way. By then the Chevy had four doors. In New York City you weren't allowed to drive until you were eighteen, so I couldn't drive myself before I was in college. Sometime in the early 1960's my father bought a used Lincoln Continental, a real monster, which my older brother and I used to drive from NYC on the Throughways and the Pennsylvania Turnpike with its tunnels and turns to reach the University of Chicago. Then when I was twenty-one my father told me his secretary had an used Oldsmobile for sale, and he bought it for me for $400. It was a two door 1953 Olds Deluxe. I used it to blast around the single lane country roads of the deep south, and it was there, in the ecstasy of speeding along a South Georgia highway, during the civil rights movement, with red dirt fields of peanuts and cotton flying by, music blasting on the radio, that I had an epiphany. I realized I was mortal. One day I was going to die. Not that minute, not right then, but some day, in the future, my life would end. I couldn't believe it. How could this end? How could the joy and ecstasy of being alive, of listening to music, or driving fast down a South Georgia road come to an end? But it could, and it would. Time is an abstraction. It doesn't actually exist. We exist, and we make up time to help us describe the past and our belief in a future. My skin is thin, my shoulder hurts because it isn't bone, its metal, and it is sixty years since I learned that I would die, only now, no matter what I do, that moment when I will join with eternity gets closer and closer. That 1953 Oldsmobile I left with a "for sale sign" parked in a New Orleans gas station is now, if it exists at all, sitting in a grassy field, its windows broken, is upholstery gone, is chassis a rusting hunk of steel. It is junk.

"STUFF is a totally new genre of book, carving out a radically new mode of storytelling. The 448 page tome serves as both testament and beacon, a record of collaboratively- engineered creative intelligence that can guide whoever is looking to continue in its lineage." - WHITNEY MALLET Kim Hastreiter, the beloved troublemaker and champion of downtown New York, is best known as the co-founder of the iconic, indie, Paper Magazine. She calls herself a cultural anthropologist, but in today's terms she might be better described as a multihyphenate artist who excavates big wild ideas from all corners of culture and brings them to life. Kim has spent the last 50 years amassing a deep and iconoclastic collection of stuff. STUFF is more than a memoir; it's a loopy, joyous, chaotic ride through the last half century of cultural chaos in the greatest city on earth. STUFF is a storytelling project about an extraordinary slice of history and the people who defined it, using Kim's singular edit of art, fashion, design, photography, books and ephemera as a lens. In these pages you'll meet Kim's amazing friends: at an all night party in the basement of an East Village church with Keith Haring, a private art sale with Jeffery Deitch in Phylis Diller's kitchen, or impromptu cocktail at Trader Vic's with Salvador Dali and Joey Arias. In Kim's New York, a leopard print Fiorucci look catches the attention of legendary photographer Bill Cunningham and sparks a lifelong friendship. A chance run-in with Kim's neighbor Steve McCurry has her witness the creation of the defining image of 9/11. And a trip with her mother to buy a dining table from Nakashima, sets off a devotion to patina as a form of personal history. Whether you are an OG or a kid, a culture vulture, artist, design buff, fashion nerd, skater, collector, chef, cinephile, New Yorker, uptowner, downtowner, out of towner, or something else entirely, STUFF will make you feel like you're sitting with Kim in her garden high above Washington Square Park, her booming voice imploring you to follow your heart and listen when the voice inside your head screams YES. Kim is begging us to pursue our lives with compulsive enthusiasm, by generously walking us through her own. STUFF is more than the sum of its parts: it is a provocation and a roadmap for building a creative life. Co-published by Damiani and Amazing Unlimited.

Il magazine 'ToiletAlex PaperPrager' nasce dall'incontro tra il mondo visionario di 'Toiletpaper' e l'immaginario sconcertante di Alex Prager, artista, regista e sceneggiatrice americana. La rivista presenta un back-to-back di dodici immagini di Alex Prager e dodici di 'Toiletpaper': l'estetica accattivante, i colori forti e i cortocircuiti visivi propri di 'Toiletpaper' amplificano il mondo di Prager e viceversa. Il sottile confine tra realtà e finzione che l'artista indaga attraverso un uso peculiare di archetipi, oggetti del quotidiano, humor e allegorie, è al centro di un'esplorazione ambigua e seducente. 'ToiletAlexPaperPrager' fa seguito a 'ToiletMartin PaperParr', la speciale edizione che nel 2018 ha raccolto le immagini più iconiche dei prolifici archivi dell'artista di fama internazionale Martin Parr e del duo Cattelan-Ferrari.

Growing up in Colorado with his father in the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association, Luke Gilford spent his formative years around the rodeo, an American institution that has often been associated with conservatism and homophobia. It was only later, when he discovered the International Gay Rodeo Association (IGRA), that he began to see himself as part of a rodeo family. The IGRA is the organizing body for the LGBTQ+ cowboy and cowgirl communities in North America - a safe space for all races and gender expressions. The queer rodeo brings in participants from rural regions all over America for structured educational programs and competitions, facilitating opportunities to hone athletic skills, connection and care for animals, personal integrity, self-confidence, and support for one another. Gilford has spent over three years traveling the country to document this diverse and ever-evolving subculture. Shot on medium-format film and printed in a traditional dark room, the work is detailed and rich with emotion and color. The resulting 'National Anthem' photographs are both personal and poetic - clear testaments to Gilford's intimate relationship to the community. 'National Anthem' is a celebration of outsiders and the immense beauty of chosen families everywhere. This new edition is going to be released in conjunction with the release of his film adaptation of National Anthem.

Since 1972 Neal Slavin has been documenting groups and gatherings. From bingo players to ballroom dancers to religious congregations Slavin has photographed seemingly every imaginable organization that human beings have dreamed up. While the pictures themselves are most often posed Slavin has always asked that his subjects arrange themselves in front of the camera, allowing natural hierarchies, group dynamics, and indications of status to emerge. Through these pictures Slavin has sought to capture the inner character of these groups of people much as a portrait photographer seeks to capture the essence of an individual. This new expanded edition is edited with a text by Kevin Moore.

Popular culture and fashion continually change and recycle. While specific objects of decor change over time, teenagers' bedrooms are still private sanctuaries, spaces for safely experimenting during a time in life when one is forming and expressing ever-evolving identities. This is part of coming-of-age. It is universal and timeless. The continued popularity of this work made in the 80s and 90s is curious. In some cases, the work evokes nostalgia, but not primarily so. Adrienne Salinger hears from current teenagers often; many send her pictures of their bedrooms today. Social media encourages users to endlessly "rebrand" their identities, creating idealized fantasies, striving for perfection. These photographs are not about perfection. They give voice to the contradictions of our identities. Bedrooms contain the past, the present, and the future. They are sites of continual transformation. Upon its release in 1995, Adrienne Salinger's book "In My Room: Teenagers in Their Bedrooms" was an immediate success, selling nearly 24,000 copies in its first few years. Over the nearly 30 years since, and especially in the most recent decade of social media, the work's appeal has actually grown tremendously. Hundreds of print and online articles, interviews and features have been published and the work has been exhibited at museums all around the world.

The upcoming Toiletpaper wall calendar 2025 features photographs conceived by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari taken from their magazine Toiletpaper, an image-only publication devoted to the combination of the height of attractiveness with that of ugliness.

The Freedom of Expression is the sequel to the Les Danseurs (Damiani, 2015) by Matthew Brookes but basically it's an archive of past and new work on dancers on a global scale and includes pictures from Paris, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Los Angeles, etc.. The book is about togetherness and inclusivity through the art of dance. It includes famous dancers and also street dancers of all ages and from many different backgrounds.

Charow spent the past two years creating his first photography book about artists living under the protection of The Loft Law. The law, enacted in 1982, granted protection and rent control to thousands of artists who were living illegally in commercial and manufacturing zoned lofts in neighborhoods like Soho, Tribeca, and the Bowery after the manufacturing industry left New York. Two years ago he found a map of the remaining protected buildings, rang hundreds of doorbells, and photographed and interviewed over 50 artists who are still living in these incredible lofts to this day. As New York faces an unprecedented amount of empty commercial space, this is perfect timing for this incredible untold story.

We Started a Nightclub: The Birth of the Pyramid Cocktail Lounge as Told by Those Who Lived It is the story of the beginnings of the club that was the launching pad for countless talented performers, musicians, and artists¿many at the earliest stages of their careers. It begins in 1981 at the last moment in the city¿s history when the East Village was considered a dangerous no man¿s land, rents were cheap, AIDS was still unknown, and a new generation of creators broke the mold and went on to make art in an atmosphere of unbridled celebration. An oral history told through more than 75 interviews, it covers the early years of the Pyramid from the time of its founding through its rise, near demise, and rebirth as the first producer of downtown¿s annual Wigstock festival. The book includes narrative commentary by Butterick, Martin, and Nakas; press releases, and never-before-seen photos, snapshots, flyers, and other ephemera The Pyramid, at 101 Avenue A, was ground zero for an explosion of creativity. In opposition to the conformity that defined the West Village, the Pyramid was run by gays, but never considered ¿a gay club¿. Instead, it offered a mixture of cultures, from groundbreaking, irreverent theater and experimental and hardcore music to ¿anti-drag¿ that challenged the norms of gender and sexual binaries. Theme nights and bar dancers, fixtures of the downtown avantgarde, and kids escaping their past and creating their futures all added to the club¿s popularity. The genius behind the club was 23-year-old Bobby Bradley, an impresario who established a collaborative atmosphere that mixed and matched performers of every stripe. Joining Bobby was a team of eager young artists, dancers, musicians, actors, and writers, telling the story of a new generation of artists in their own words. At the Pyramid, John Kelly, John Jesurun, Kestutis Nakas, and Ann Magnuson rubbed elbows with They Might be Giants, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, 3 Teen Kill 4, and performers like Ethyl Eichelberger, John Sex, Tabboo!, Hapi Phace, and Lady Bunny added their twist on drag with outrageous personas. By offering a home to obscure, genre-defying, experimental, and unpolished acts, the Pyramid played a crucial role in shaping the city¿s underground cultural scene for decades to come. By 1985, Bobby and his team had produced thousands of original performances and ushered in a time of intense creativity in the East Village. Sadly, addiction, AIDS, and other perils of human existence brought Bobby (and so many others) down; the story of his downfall marks the ¿end of the beginning¿ of the Pyramid in 1986. With reminiscences and anecdotes from performers and bar boys to doormen and DJs, the Cast of Characters section of the book includes descriptions of the 250+ people who have added their voices or are referenced in this history of those seminal times. We Started a Nightclub also includes excerpts of more than 50 Pyramid press releases written by Martin between 1983 and 1986, documenting the range of acts and cultural commentary at the heart of the club. Given the time constraints and limited communication channels of the analog age, many entries read like Felix Feneon¿s ¿Novels in Three Lines,¿ compressed and intentionally humorous¿a mirror of the personalities and satirical spirit of the club. Like C. Carr¿s ¿Fire in the Belly,¿ We Started A Nightclub is an inside look at the cultural history of the East Village in the early 1980's, combining small anecdotes and larger narratives to capture the ethos of the Pyramid. Both the unsung heroes and the famous animate these pages with memories and backstories on people and events. Like Patti Smith¿s ¿Just Kids,¿ it intimately touches the real lives of artists. And like Jean Stein¿s ¿Edie: an American Biography,¿ the story of the club is told through the perspectives of those who lived it. What Studio 54 was for disco and pop culture, the Pyramid was for the alternative cultures of downtown NYC. The 2015 Howl exhibition, ¿Secrets of the Great Pyramid: The Pyramid Cocktail Lounge as Cultural Laboratory, curated by Brian Butterick, featured the voices, works, and ephemera of more than 50 artists associated with the Pyramid alongside performances and panel discussions. The exhibition remains one of Howl¿s most successful to date, demonstrating strong interest in the Pyramid and its place in cultural history. The book, for which interviews began in 2006, is timelier than ever as the only in-depth exploration of the Pyramid¿s origins. In 2021, the Pyramid closed permanently. Though the venue was no longer the cultural hotbed of its early years, its closure prompted an outpouring of reminiscence and mourning for a bygone era, amid a broad renewed interest in the art and culture of 1980s New York¿the eras that predated rapid gentrification, and the sweeping impact of the AIDS epidemic.