the art collectors

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

Clayton Patterson Captures New York

For the past 30 years, downtown documentarian, Clayton Patterson, has been photographing and filming the history of New York City’s Lower East Side. From the gritty heyday of the 1980s, to recent post-Guliani gentrification, Patterson has captured it all. As stated by the New York Times, “He can’t stop, even after more than a dozen arrests by camera-shy police officers. He has amassed a huge day-by-day visual history of the area, told mainly through unpretentious portraits of its myriad and diverse faces: tenement kids and homeless people, poets and politicians, drug dealers and drag queens, rabbis and santeros, beat cops, graffiti taggers, hookers, junkies, punks, anarchists, mystics and crackpots.”

Now the artist’s work is the is the subject of a new documentary film, Captured, which offers a rare glimpse into one of the most historically relevant archives chronicling modern New York City. While there are no distribution plans set for the movie, keep an eye out for select showings. Next up will be an August 22nd screening at the New Museum in New York, followed by a Q + A session with Patterson and the film makers. The viewing coincides with museum’s Bowery Artist Tribute, an ongoing project documenting artists who have lived and worked around the Bowery in lower Manhattan.

Tix here. Click through for trailer and interview.