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NEW YORK - Lou Reed has long been lauded for his critically acclaimed musical portrait of New York. Now the rock star has turned his attention to his favourite city once again, this time as a photographer.
Reed's album New York is considered by many to be among his finest works, but now he is charting the changing nature of the city in photographs.
Best known for Walk on the Wild Side and Sweet Jane, Reed is co-curating a Manhattan show featuring photos by musicians and prepping to take his own touring New York photo exhibit show to Amsterdam next month.
"I've always been interested in photography," Reed told Reuters in an interview. "What was I trying to accomplish with the New York photos? I wanted to record the way New York looks right now, before it changes any more."
Reed's haunting shots of the New York skyline are among his photos hanging in the Visions of Rock show at 401 Projects Gallery in lower Manhattan through November 4.
"After 9/11 ... I thought and continue to think that New York is an island and that we forget it's an island and this is a reminder that it's incredibly beautiful," he said.
Collaborating with photographer Mark Seliger the Visions of Rock show features images taken by rock musicians - urban kids snapped by Lenny Kravitz, a Bryan Adams shot of Queen Elizabeth II and another by Adams of former Prime Minister Tony Blair wielding an electric guitar.
Michael Stipe, Jakob Dylan, John Mayer, Perry Farrell, Graham Nash, Mick Fleetwood and Melissa Auf Der Maur also have photos in the show.
Reed will take his own show, New York, to the Indomania Gallery in Amsterdam October 8, scheduled in conjunction with an Andy Warhol retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum.
The New York show's run at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh finished early this month and the show is documented in his second book of photos, Lou Reed's New York.
But would the former frontman of the 1960s proto-punk Velvet Underground ever revisit the city as subject for a sequel to his New York album?
"I'm not going to make an album about gentrification," said Reed. "The real thing that's happened in this city is the recovery from 9/11. It's astonishing to be downtown and that hole's still there."
Still, Reed sees change as just one of New York's enduring characteristics.
"New York is always changing. Every time I go on tour I come back and this has changed, this moved, this was closed," he said. "New York keeps expanding and changing, and more and more people coming in and the Wall Street guys seem to be making money again. So they're buying up everything in sight.
"All the artists have been moving out of the Lower East Side and moving to Brooklyn and soon there's nothing left in Brooklyn. So then what happens?"
- REUTERS
