Artist Statement
These pictures of the recent past reveal a time just before the proliferation of computers, smart phones, I pods, digital cameras and the internet: there was no way to filter the realities of the broken city, and there was no refuge in virtual space. For better and for worse one was simply ”on the street,” in public space, bathing in the comforts, (or terrors), of the human sea.
In the subways, graffiti tags and spray painting exploded onto every surface and whole subway cars were “bombed,” windows and all. Above and below ground, crime and crack were on the rise, therefore rents were cheap and tourists didn’t come to N.Y.C., much.
Times Square and the East Village streets were drugged-out, but they were also home to thousands of artists and dozens of art galleries and music clubs. In mid-town the gaudy rich wore furs in unprecedented numbers, Ronald Reagan was president, “greed was good,” and Y2K hysteria was beginning.
To some, the New York City of the recent past was a hell on Earth,yet to others it was one of New York’s most fertile artistic periods. For me the 80?s streets were a photographic celebration and i danced with it’s perennial ghosts.i shot 4 – 5 rolls of film nearly everyday, on the street and, in the subways.luckily, i was never attacked by a crack-head……badly.
Richard Sandler is a street photographer (since 1977), and a filmmaker (since 1992). Sandler was awarded two New York Foundation for the Arts grants in Photography (1992, 1998), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for Filmmaking in 2006, and a New York State Council on the Arts Fellowship for Filmmaking in 2008.
Sandler's photographs are in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, the New York Historical Society, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Tx.
Richard Sandler's films are:
"The Gods of Times Square," 1999
"Brave New York," 2004
"SWAY," 2006
"Everybody is Hurting," 2007
"The Rocks of Eternity: Conversations With Satish Kumar," 2008
"Forever and Sunsmell," 2010
"Radioactive City," 2011
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