Photo : Gerard Malanga / Galerie du Jour agnès b.
Gerard Malanga
An iconic figure of Andy Warhol’s Factory, Gerard Malanga was one of the privileged witnesses of the New York art scene of the 1960s/1970s, whose figures, encounters, and life moments he photographed. A photographer, poet, and filmmaker, he was both an actor and an attentive observer of it. Through a selection of photographs, Galerie du Jour agnès b. revisits this era where artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, dancers, and poets mingled in a creative effervescence and freedom that continue to fascinate us even today.
Galerie du Jour agnès b. (Paris 13th)
About
This exhibition is also the story of a loyalty and a friendship between Gerard Malanga and agnès b. In 2004, several of the artist’s prints were already presented at the Galerie du Jour as part of the collective exhibition Bande à Part, dedicated to the constellation of artists and personalities who shaped the New York underground scene. More than twenty years later, his gaze returns to the gallery, like a living memory of that era, as free and intimate as ever.
Born in the Bronx in 1943, Gerard Malanga met Andy Warhol in 1963, at the age of twenty, thanks to the poet Charles Henri Ford. He joined the Factory and quickly became one of the central figures of this extraordinary artistic adventure. His career spans music, poetry, cinema, performance, and photography, blurring the boundaries between disciplines.
Throughout his encounters, Malanga photographed those who embodied this era: Andy Warhol, William S. Burroughs, Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop, Dennis Hopper, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Candy Darling, and many others. His photographs do not seek to manufacture icons. On the contrary, they seem to bring them closer to us, capturing the artists in moments of presence, complicity, solitude, or abandonment.
Perhaps that is where the particular strength of his work lies. Behind the figures who have become mythical, Malanga reveals people—friends, fellow travelers, beings encountered in the course of an evening, a concert, an apartment, or a café. His camera becomes a way to keep track of these relationships and this ephemeral community.
I photographed them because they were my friends, because I loved them, because they were there.
Gerard Malanga, photographerThis affective dimension deeply permeates his work. It makes Malanga’s photography not only an exceptional archive of an era, but also the narrative of an artistic community, a generation, and the friendships that spanned it. And while this New York scene now belongs to history, it has lost none of its capacity to electrify us. In Malanga’s gaze, it remains alive and profoundly human.
Our take on this event
Step into the electric atmosphere of the New York underground through the intimate lens of Gerard Malanga. Moving past the myth of the Factory, these photographs reveal his closest companions with raw, unfiltered authenticity. It is a brilliant opportunity to experience the human side of a legendary era that still shapes our visual culture.
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