DJ Lovebug, Grandmaster Caz, Busy Bee photograph: Harlem 1980 by Charlie Ahearn
By Charlie Ahearn
Located in NEW YORK, NY
DJ Lovebug, Grandmaster Caz, Busy Bee at the Celebrity Club: Harlem, New York, 1980 by Charlie Ahearn, director of Wild Style (1982): A seminal early Hip Hop photograph featured as part of the exhibition: New York, New Music 1980-86: Museum of the City of New York (2021). Medium: Archival Inkjet Print on heavy-weight paper. Overall dimensions: 16 x 22 inches (Image size: 14 x 20 inches). Hand signed & numbered on the verso, from a limited edition of 10. Excellent overall condition. Provenance: Obtained directly from artist. Artist Bio: Charlie Ahearn, best known as the director of the classic hip-hop film Wild Style (1982), arrived in New York in 1973 to attend the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. Later he was joined by his twin brother, John Ahearn, and they became part of the artists' group Colab (aka Collaborative Projects, Inc). Ahearn showed his early films in an abandoned Time Square massage parlour that Colab had taken over on the corner of 7th Avenue and 41st Street (where Ahearn also lived from 1981 to 1993). Colab's 1981 art show - titled, "The Times Square Show" - is famous for introducing Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring among many others. In 1982, Ahearn directed Wild Style - universally hailed as the first hip-hop movie. Wild Style immortalized the birth of an underground hip-hop scene changing the face of music, fashion, art & popular culture forever. Ahearn's recent silkscreen paintings depicting hip hop culture’s seminal years were exhibited at PPOW Gallery in New York in 2017 and Beyond The Streets (2019 & 2020); with selections of his photography and film work most recently exhibited at MFA Boston...
1980s Pop Art Charlie Ahearn Photography
Inkjet
