Brooklyn Youth Orchestra

  

A short film I made about the Brooklyn Youth Orchestra was shown for the first time at the Brooklyn Youth Music Project's 1st birthday celebration in Brooklyn Heights.  The Brooklyn Youth Music Project is a nonprofit organization that serves young musicians age 5 to 18 from all over Brooklyn. Their mission is to provide young musicians with a high standard of training and performance, in ensembles large and small. They provide opportunities for students to perform a wide variety of music, including classical,  contemporary and jazz.

Keith Haring at Brooklyn Museum

Seven of my photographs from the early 1980s are included in the Brooklyn Museum exhibition of Keith Haring's work from 1978-1982.

Lady Wrestling Night, Club 57, 1980

Barbie & The Heftones

Tseng Kwong Chi, Elvis Night at Club 57, 1980

Keith Haring & Tseng Kwong Chi at Club 57, 1980

Entrance to Club 57, St. Marks Place, NY, 1980

Klaus Nomi at Hurrah's, 1980

New York Places-Jewish Spaces: Life in the City, 1700-2012

Photographs I made of Jewish neighborhoods and Jewish structures along Ocean Parkway--from Kensington to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn are part of the exhibition New York Places, Jewish Spaces: Life in the City, 1700-2012 at the Center for Jewish History (15 West 16th St. NYC.) The exhibit runs until August, 2012.

Brighton Beach

Washington Cemetery

Congregation Shaare Zion-2024 Ocean Parkway

Ocean Parkway Jewish Center-550 Ocean Parkway

Caretaker, Kavkazi Jewish Center-347 Ocean Parkway

Ghana

I traveled to Ghana for Episcopal Relief & Development, to photograph and film the many programs they support in the northern regions of the country.  I visited remote villages, accompanying community volunteers as they distributed malaria nets, a trade school that teaches women to sew, and micro-finance cooperatives that support women to make goods for sale in the markets.

Alfred Gescheidt-1926-2012

Photograph by Harvey Wang

Alfred Gescheidt died this past Sunday, peacefully in his apartment on Lexington Ave. I had the honor of interviewing Alfred last year for my documentary film about transition in photography from a chemical process to a digital one. Alfred began his career as documentary photographer in New York in the late 1940s. He was most known as a photo satirist and photographic montage artist, creating images that were outrageous, experimental, funny and erotic. His work seemed photoshopped, long before Photoshop was invented.






His erotic photomontages were exhibited at Higher Pictures in 2009.

Flophouse: Life on the Bowery (Random House, 2000) is featured in a recent post on Joe Bonomo's blog No Such Thing as Was.   Joe is an author, essayist, cultural historian and professor in the Department of English at Northern Illinois University.

"While reading East of Bowery I was put in mind of Flophouse: Life on the Bowery, published in 2000, a terrific collection of Harvey Wang's photos of soon-to-be-gone Bowery transient hotels, David Isay's and Stacy Abramson's historical commentary, and edited monologues of folks barely if stubbornly hanging on in those residences. After Joseph Mitchell's New Yorker essays and James Agee's and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men—and predating the boomlet of blogs such as Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, EV Grieve, It's All The Streets You Crossed Not So Long Ago, and many others—Flophouse documents the city in vivid and precise nonfiction, telling true stories as those stories leaned and dissolved in dire times. I've long been fascinated by the Bowery and its place in popular culture, careful to leaven what could become dangerous and irresponsible nostalgic romance with the painful reality of the street's history and its untold broken denizens."

Photo Essay in UK's Life Force Photography Magazine

An early photo essay of mine about Madison County, North Carolina has been published in Life Force the acclaimed magazine of the photo-essay. The magazine's goal is to "show the work of the best photographers in the world." Life Force Magazine is designed to tell stories in pictures and to explore the unique power of the photo-essay. The only writing in the magazine is by the photographers themselves and is there to add context, color and understanding. The BBC's Culture Show have described Life Force Magazine as the Picture Post of the 21st Century'

Make + Model

I am happy to be represented for commercials and film projects by the Culver City based production company Make + Model. REEL

New York Bound Books

Nice Post on the New York Bound Book blog about "Out Harvey Wang's Window" at the Tenement Museum.

Out Harvey Wang's Window

"Out Harvey Wang's Window," opens at The Lower East Side Tenement Museum's newly completed Sadie Samuelson Levy Immigrant Heritage Center. This will be the first exhibition in the Tenement Museum's new building at 103 Orchard Street.

The museum's press release writes that the exhibition "explores the ongoing evolution of the Lower East Side through 22 black-and-white photographs. Taken between 1979 and 1993, Wang’s images tell the fascinating and often-forgotten stories of immigrant and working class New Yorkers.  The traditions, homes and everyday lives of Wang’s subjects are captured with tenderness and clarity, revealing powerful glimpses of the neighborhood’s complex history." Annie Polland, Vice President of Education at the Museum said, “Harvey Wang’s photographs are beautiful and historically important. They echo the mission of the Tenement Museum and extend the stories we tell into the late 20th century.

Harvey Wang on NY Times Lens Blog

The New York Times Lens Blog featured a slide show from my upcoming exhibition at The Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

Club 57 at Royal/T- Pacific Standard Time

Royal/T’s Pacific Standard Time installation features Ann Magnuson and Kenny Scharf’s East Village West exhibit. Scharf and Magnuson met in NYC and became key figures in the East Village art scene in the eighties.  The show honors an era of art that was directly inspired by Hollywood dream factories during the Atomic Age. Featured in the installation are over 20 photographs by Harvey Wang, as well as ongoing slide show of his documentation of Club 57 and the East Village in the 1980s.

In additon to work by Scharf the exhibit include work by other East Village luminaries such as Keith Haring, John Sex and Jean Michel Basquiat.  Located in Culver City, Royal/T, LA’s first Japanese- style cosplay café, gift shop and art space, is a little piece of Japan dropped right into LA. The Harajuku waitress maids surrounded by Murakami and Hello Kitty make this unique gallery café a playful experience not to be missed. Gallery owner, Susan Hancock’s intention is to make everyone feel like, “Alice in Wonderland, gone down the rabbit hole.”

East Village West runs through 1/10/12

Royal/T
8910 Washington Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232
T 310 559 6300

Adam Purple in West Virginia

Adam Purple and The Garden of Eden was screened at the American Conservation Film Festival. The ACFF is an annual event held in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, a vibrant arts community 70 miles west of Washington DC. The ACFF features films from a diverse group of conservation filmmakers from around the world that rarely receive a wide showing. The Adam Purple film was screened at the beautiful Opera house in downtown Shepherdstown.

Starz Denver Film Festival

Adam Purple and The Garden of Eden by Harvey Wang and Amy Brost was screened at the Starz Denver Film Festival on 11/2/11.

My City, My New York

I am included in the book, "My City, My New York" by Jeryl Brunner. The book interviews 300 of "New York's Notables: actors, writers, chefs, directors, sports stars and moguls--from Matthew Broderick to Tina Fey to Fran Lebowitz to Woody Allen to Daniel Boulud to Julianna Margulies" and...Harvey Wang.

Club 57 & Friends

September 8th -October 9th, 2011
Three photographs of mine are included in CLUB 57 & Friends, an exhibit focusing on many of the pioneers of the early 1980's East Village visual and performing art scene.

CLUB 57 (57 St.Mark's Place) was one of the first truly avant-garde night clubs and performance spaces in the East Village. From 1979 through 1983, Club 57 played host for countless venues and was the source of immeasurable of creative experimentation. With a slight punk and alternative edge, the club provided a forum that encouraged artists to push the creative boundaries through all possible forms and mediums. Themed events that included such standards as art exhibitions and poetry reading were trumped by elaborated staged productions of the Grand Ole Opry, Elvis nights, Monster Movie night and a Putt-putt reggae miniature golf course, complete with refrigerator boxes to resemble a shanty town. For many years Club 57 was by managed by Ann Magnuson.
This exhibition also focuses on what was happening with street and graffiti art in the East Village during this same period. On display will be numerous figurative "shadow" paintings by Richard Hambelton who many consider the dean of late 70's- early 80's street art. Featured along side these works will be photographs, collages, paintings & drawings by many of the pioneers of East Village art scene, displayed alongside Club 57 alumni.  Included in the exhibition are the following esteemed artists: Futura 2000, Keith Haring, Rene Ricard, Julius Klein, Robert Carrithers, Clayton Patterson, Robert Hawkins, Mark Sink, Martha Cooper, Hank O'Neil, Edward Brezinski, Parker Dulany, Rodney Alan Greenblatt, Harvey Wang

, Scott Covert, LA 2 and Jean Michel Basquiat.

Gallery Address:
437 East 9th @ AVE. A, New York, NY 10009

Mary Frank

I've been working with filmmaker/photographer/musician John Cohen on a documentary film about artist Mary Frank. We filmed her working at her studio in Woodstock, N.Y. over the summer.

Nicaragua

July 19-24. I traveled to Nicaragua to photograph and film programs supported by Episcopal Relief and Development. The work is used to promote the important work done by ER-D.

Adam Purple and The Garden of Eden screening

The short film, "Adam Purple and The Garden of Eden" (Directed by Amy Brost and myself) will be screened at the Brooklyn Shorts Film Festival on June 15 at Galapagos in Dumbo.   2011 marks the 25th anniversary of the destruction of The Garden of Eden, an earthwork created by Adam Purple that once spanned five city lots on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. This short film features Harvey Wang’s photographs which documents the expansion of the Garden from 1978 to 1985.

Adam Purple and The Garden of Eden exhibit

January 8, 2011 marks the 25th anniversary of the destruction of The Garden of Eden, an earthwork created by Adam Purple that once spanned five city lots on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. This selection of Harvey Wang’s photographs, for the most part unpublished and on display for the first time, documents the expansion of the Garden from 1978 to 1985. Rare prints of a few of Adam’s 1975-76 negatives will also be shown.

FusionArts Museum (Gallery B) 57 Stanton Street, New York, NY 10002