Recorded in: New York City
Episode Length:
Air Date: July 29, 2021
Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Ellen Payne Smith
It was a book of photos and paintings of his called Still Looking (Editions Patrick Frey) that my friend Anthony showed me that really piqued my interest in Billy Sullivan. As I flipped through it, made up of work spanning 50 years, I couldn't believe how good he was at both - as a painter and as a photographer. While he always considered his photos to be raw material for painting, they truly exhibit superior qualities of pure seeing. And all the people in them! Everyone from his late husband, the curator Klaus Kertes to Hilton Als, Cookie Mueller to his muses Christian and Ed. His work is both a portrait of his life and of downtown New York over the past five decades.
We got together at his loft on the bowery where he's been living for over 40 years. I saw photos of his tacked onto the wall Pastels and paintings of flowers for a show which is up now at the Madoo Conservancy. It was a rainy afternoon and it was coming down pretty hard on the skylights, so do forgive the ambients sounds. We started talking about how he first started making photos.
Amy and Sam, Summer 1976 by Billy Sullivan
Cookie’s Kitchen, 1980 by Billy Sullivan
Hilton, 1996 by Billy Sullivan