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I'll take Manhattan in a garbage bag with Latin written on it that says / “It's hard to give a shit these days” / Manhattan's sinking like a rock, into the filthy Hudson (Romeo had Juliet). After having sung about New York, an object of both love and hate, and most of all a portent that hangs in the balance, ready to disappear behind the anxiety of renewal that shakes up the city, Lou Reed once again speaks of her, of New York, this time though, through digital photography.
“It should be said that the artist has no intention of answering any questions regarding his music,” warns the press office which has the thankless job of managing the temporary transfer to Milan for Lou Reed the photographer, still as pestilential, sullen and angry as ever, as legend would have it.
Thirty or so medium to large sized images – with prices ranging from 2,000 to 9,000 dollars, with a run of nine prints each – that depict his long standing muse: the city of New York.
Urban panoramas, hidden corners of the city and unusual lights; the photographs on display contain that obscure, bashful and introverted poetic language that has always been associated with Reed’s human and artistic soul. Profiles of skyscrapers at dawn, in a silent, sleeping New York, clouds in the sky over America, foggy afternoons in the city, the cold and the snow, reflections in the waters of the Hudson River. In these shots, the surroundings are sharp, but they often fade away, as in the photos that illustrate a nocturnal New York, illuminated only by a combination of streetlights and the headlights of the passing cars. “They are all digital photographs,” explains the artist. “It was a meagre attempt to share the beauty that struck my soul as an observer. I took them over the past two years, waking at dawn or in the deep of the night, wandering around with some very complicated equipment (which made it very slow-going – at least for me). I also wanted people to see this part of the city after September 11th, so they would know how beautiful it is before it disappears.” Before it disappears? “Yes, each time I return to New York, I realize that they have torn something down to construct a new building. And each time I come back home, I read that they’ve discovered a new Lou Reed (a slightly ironic smile appears across his lips). “In New York, nothing is more than 80 years old, that’s why I love being in Italy. I could spend my life here, or rather many lives, in your cities: Rome, Milan, and Florence. Each time I see something beautiful, I want to photograph it.” Lou Reed took his first photo, or at least what he considers to be his first, in Tokyo: “There was a very strange restaurant near my hotel; it resembled a spaceship leaning up against a tractor. I went to a little shop and bought myself a Contax and, despite the fact that the instructions were in Japanese, I took a photo. That photo still hangs on my wall and everyone who sees it asks me what it represents.”
The idols of Lou Reed the photographer include the classics, along with a few selected outsiders: “I really like Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin. But the two people who have influenced me the most are Billy Name (Editor’s Note: the legendary photographer from Andy Warhol’s Factory) and my childhood friend, Donald Greenhouse. He recently passed away, and he never had the recognition he deserved, but he was a great photographer and printer. I learned a great deal from him.”
There are no human subjects in his photographs, other than a series of black and white self portraits entitled Snapper which depict only his eyes. And then there is still another series featuring a fluorescent tangle of tubes that seems to have been influenced by Warhol’s Pop Art movement, which took place at the same time that Reed himself was associated with the Factory. The show is accompanied by a catalogue of the same name published by Steidl Publishing.

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