Recorded in: Long Island, NY
Episode Length: 48:02
Air Date: March 8, 2022
Produced by: Jordan Weitzman
Edited by: Ellen Payne Smith
On a cold winter day last month, I took an early morning train from Penn Station out to Long Island to meet Gary Schneider. Originally from East London, South Africa, Schneider moved to New York in the late '70s to work for Richard Foreman's Ontological Hysterical Theatre. It was there that he met his partner, the performer John Erdman. In 1981, with the encouragement of their friend Peter Hujar, Schneider and Erdman opened up a photo lab in New York's East Village which would become legendary. Schneider went on to print for Richard Avedon, Lisette Model, Irving Penn, Nan Goldin, Robert Gober, and of course, Peter Hujar. In Hujar's dying wishes, he specified that Schneider was the only person who would be allowed to make posthumous prints of his work.
Funny enough, Schneider's photos look nothing like his old friends. They are tough, microscopically detailed portraits of friends and artists' faces and bodies. They have been exhibited internationally, and are the subjects of his dozen monographs.
We sat in the living room of their cottage surrounded by snow-covered birch trees to record this conversation. Quaint, and understated, with photos from their great collection hanging on their walls, it felt like a pretty magical place to be in.
John Double, 1989 by Gary Schneider
Vince Aletti, 2001 by Gary Schneider
Lynne Tillman, 1990 by Gary Schneider