[Portrait Photograph of Taylor Mead] de Malanga, Gerard - 1971

[New York: Gerard Malanga], 1971. Photographs. Very good. [1971, printed later]. Image size 10 x 6 3/4 inches, sheet size 14 x 11 inches, mat size 16 x 12 inches. Numbered 1/10 and signed in pencil on the mat by Gerard Malanga. Loosely mounted on new archival back, new archival matting between original mat and print, and clear polyester protective cover. A few small dents and very minor crackling in print; original mat toned at edges. Very good to near fine.

Portrait of poet and actor Taylor Mead (1924-2013) swimming off Southampton Beach, Long Island, in 1971. Mead was a major figure in the Factory scene during the 1960s and a favorite fixture on the Lower East Side. His NEW YORK TIMES obituary called him "the quintessential Downtown figure": "He read his poems in a Bowery bar, walked as many as 80 blocks a day and fed stray cats in a cemetery, usually after midnight." Poet, photographer, and archivist Gerard Malanga (born 1943) was Warhol's right-hand man during the most important years of the Factory, where he worked from 1963 to 1970. Among his many collaborations with Warhol was the 1966/67 "Screen Tests" project. The project resulted in the 1967 book, SCREEN TESTS / A DIARY, which prints stills from film portraits of 54 poets, artists, musicians, and others, with poems by Malanga on facing pages. Malanga began pursuing portrait photography more actively in 1969 and left the Factory in 1970 to pursue the work further. Over the next several years, Malanga photographed dozens of people, famous and not famous, associated with the New York avant garde and produced a body of portraits noted for their warmth and a clear rapport between photographer and subject. In an essay published in the 2000 retrospective book, GERARD MALANGA : SCREEN TESTS, PORTRAITS, AND NUDES, Ben Maddow writes, "One feels, in spite of one's hard earned skepticism ... on first viewing the labors of Gerard Malanga, a sensation of spontaneous pleasure. Each image is an act of friendship, and conciously so." He quotes Malanga from a letter, "Nothing is faked or was done for any other purpose than as archival remembrance. I believe each person, as it were, gave me their picture" (p. 120). The present photograph of Taylor Mead is the cover image for SCREEN TESTS, PORTRAITS, AND NUDES.