New York must have been a fantastic place for an artist to be in the 1980s. It wasn’t a great time for New York itself – the city was facing high rates of crime and drug circulation and going through a deep economic crisis; but Manhattan was still the gritty, pre-Giuliani, pre-gentrification place that many still miss, and for artists in particular, the crisis meant big spaces to rent at ridiculous prices where to live, create, party. Such conditions allowed for the rising of a thriving community of artists which in great part gravitated towards the leading figure of Andy Warhol and his legendary Interview magazine.
Andy Warhol in a photograph by Edo Bertoglio
“Fabulous!” said Andy Warhol while looking at Swiss photographer Edo Bertoglio‘s photographs, the first time they met each other. Bertoglio had moved to New York in 1976, and remained there until 1989. During this time, he frequented historical clubs like CBGB and Studio 54, and met and worked with many up-and-coming talents that would become top artists only a few years later, from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Mattia Bonetti, from Grace Jones to Blondie’s Debbie Harry. The below photo of Madonna shot by Bertoglio was going to be the Like a Virgin album cover, if only the producers hadn’t decided to go another way at the last minute.
It wasn’t long before the flipside of that lifestyle got to Bertoglio, as it did to many others. At the beginning of the 1980s, he started using drugs and soon became addicted. “It increased our desire to communicate, the exchange of ideas, projects. It added dynamism to creativity“. It was his girlfriend from high school, Michaela, who eventually put him on a plane to Milan and saved him from New York.
Edo Bertoglio documented his New York life with a Polaroid SX70 camera that had only been launched on the market for a few years, creating a unique and pioneering archive of polaroid images. The images range from pictures of Bertoglio’s friends to shots of ordinary objects and interiors, from nude photos to random images of New York – all are shot with a spontaneous, casual approach that anticipated the mobile photography of modern days.
Edo Bertoglio’s polaroids are now available in New York Polaroids 1976-1989, a photobook recently published by Yard Press which includes an interview to Bertoglio by Stefano Bianchi (from which the quotes in this article are taken from).
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