Toyo Project 1
This meant to draw attention to the photographic work of Toyo Tsuchiya, who has produced a bold and thoughtful collection of work from the early Eighties art scene of Lower Manhattan.
I have videos of No Se No performances and Toyo talking about life in the Lower East Side. (Thank you, Cowboy) If anyone has ideas on how to transfer Beta (Beta, not Betacam) tapes into today’s technology, please get in touch. Thank you.
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I started this to bring attention to Toyo’s photographic work and to see what would happen. Yes, I can write, but maybe I don’t need to write anything. There is already one book about the Rivington School. Probably other people have more interesting things to say. Toyo’s own memories and stories are treasures. If I do write, I thought, I’d probably write about Toyo’s images in a very impersonal manner, to counterbalance the intimacy found in his images. Topics like dates and short biographies, how Toyo composes in the viewfinder, the challenges of film. Then, out of the blue… He sent some picture of me.
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OK… This series of blog posts is not about me. The first three introduce Toyo and myself, but after that… who knows? I graduated from RIT with a BFA in Photographic Illustration, with a minor in Film and Video. I graduated early, in March 1983. I was having a party and I told a teacher about it. He said where you going? I said New York City. He said what are you going to do and I said I don’t know. He showed me a fax. Call them. If you work there, you get access to equipment. That’s what it’s all about. That was on a Friday. They wanted me to come in on Monday. I arrived in Brooklyn, sat by the river with my good friend Pat and wondered about the Manhattan skyline. We were waiting for another good friend, Ben to show up. We were going to stay at his loft.
The next morning Ben’s girlfriend took us on the subway to Rivington Street. It was cold but there was a street market in the park we had to cut across. I imagined fruits and vegetables, maybe cooked chicken or something. We got closer, we were in the middle of it. The ground was completely blue, covered with empty syringe wrappers. Heroin. My interview was just on the other side. We walked through, I went up the stairs, started work the next day. That place was called Young Filmakers/Video Arts. The address was 4 Rivington. Later I moved right around the corner, onto the Bowery.
No Se No was at 32 Rivington Street. I left for a two week stay in Japan in October, 1984. The energy of what I experienced — and so much more, bursts out of every image Toyo has created. I am writing this from Kuala Lumpur, on July 18, 2017. I am seeing some of these pictures of myself… for the first time.
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Toyo Project 2 is here.
