Vintage Photos of the Meatpacking District’s “Drag Queen Stroll”
September 11, 2013 | Kyle Chayka
Contemporary art photographer Jeff Cowen who has become widely known for his unique, painterly portraits and collages, but in the 1980s, earlier in his career, he captured several striking images of New York City’s drag queen culture. The images, now housed at the New York Historical Society are accompanied by a small written piece by the artist.
Cowen talks about “The Stroll,” the area along 17th Street and 9th Avenue west to the Hudson River in the Meatpacking District on Gansevoort — “a haven for the largest transvestite subculture on the east coast,” struggling with poverty, homelessness, frequent assaults on sexworkers, HIV/AIDS and drug abuse.
As was expected, the next piece of Banksy's "Better Out Than In" series is this truck full of squealing stuffed animals. It's called The Sirens of the Lambs, and it's apparently going to be rolling through the Meatpacking District today. The audio guide isn't working for us, but we'll update if and…
Recently, the Guggenheim Archives had a screening of unlabeled 8mm films from their massive collection. The eye-opening, short, hazy vignettes of Manhattan's Meatpacking District show workers go about their day, accompanied by clips of trash and other ephemera surrounding the area, as well as some shots of the subway as…
It's hard to imagine Times Square before it became the Disneyfied, Toys-R-Us-bag-toting-tourist-and-kiddie-infested postcard of Capitalist America that we hate so dearly today. Luckily, we've come across the photo collection of Gregoire Alessandrini to remind us that those days were more than just folklore. While attending a local film school in…
