By Fred McDarrah
Located in Surfside, FL
Bob Grant - Radio Personality at WOR NYC march 10, 1994
Photographer Fred McDarrah
Over a 50-year span, McDarrah documented the rise of the Beat Generation, the city’s postmodern art movement, its off-off-Broadway actors, troubadours, politicians, agitators and social protests.
Fred captured Jack Kerouac frolicking with women at a New Year’s bash in 1958, Andy Warhol adjusting a movie-camera lens in his silver-covered factory, and Bob Dylan offering a salute of recognition outside Sheridan Square near the Voice’s old office.
Not just a social chronicler, McDarrah was a great photo-journalist.
For years, McDarrah was the Voice's only photographer and, for decades, he ran the Voice’s photo department, where he helped train dozens of young photographers, including James Hamilton, Sylvia Plachy, Robin Holland and Marc Asnin. His mailbox was simply marked "McPhoto."
An exhibit of McDarrah’s photos of artists presented by the Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea was hailed by The New York Times as “a visual encyclopedia of the era’s cultural scene.”
artists in their studios, (Alice Neel, Philip Guston, Stuart Davis, Robert Smithson, Jasper Johns, Franz Kline), actors (Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro on the set of “Taxi Driver”), musicians (Janis Joplin, Alice Cooper, Bob Dylan) and documentary images of early happenings and performances (Yayoi Kusama, Charlotte Moorman, Al Hansen, Jim Dine, Nam June Paik). The many images of Andy Warhol include the well-known one with his Brillo boxes at the Stable Gallery in 1964. Woody Allen, Diane Arbus, W. H. Auden, Francis Bacon, Joan Baez, Louise Bourgeois, David Bowie, Jimmy Breslin, William Burroughs, John Cage, Leo Castelli, Christo, Leonard Cohen, Merce Cunningham, William de Kooning, Jim Dine, Mark di Suvero, Marcel Duchamp, Bob Dylan, Federico Fellini, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Indiana, Mick Jagger, Jasper Johns, Kusama, John Lennon, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Nam June Paik, Elvis Presley, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Robert Rauschenberg, Lou Reed, James Rosenquist, Mark Rothko, Ed Ruscha, Robert Smithson, Susan Sontag, Andy Warhol, and others.
McDarrah’s prints have been collected in depth by the J. Paul Getty Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, Washington. His work is in numerous public and private collections.
Robert Ciro Gigante, known as Bob Grant (March 14, 1929 – December 31, 2013), was an American radio host. A veteran of broadcasting in New York City, Grant is considered a pioneer of the conservative talk radio format. Grant was widely termed a political conservative, and personally considered himself to be a conservative with some libertarian leanings.
On September 15, 1991, a roast honoring Grant for twenty one years of radio in New York City was held in West Orange, New Jersey. Freddie Roman was the Master of Ceremonies, and Grant was roasted by New York Senator Al D'Amato, comedian Pat Cooper, Soupy Sales, Rush Limbaugh, comedian Joe Piscopo and Lynn Samuels, among others. Over the years, national radio talk personality Howard Stern has made differing remarks on his admiration for Grant as an early influence. Stern said, "I consider him to be the best broadcaster I've ever heard." Radio & Records had planned to issue a Lifetime Achievement Award to Grant during its annual convention in March 2008; however, the nomination was revoked. Sean Hannity, Opie and Anthony, comedian Jim Norton, Lars Larson...
Category
1990s American Modern Black and White Photography
