The Market Diner Bash Redux

Interest in the New York photo scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s — the period in which my own work as a critic began — seems to be moving toward critical mass, with new energy coming from unexpected quarters. New Zealand photographer and filmmaker Stuart Page has issued his long-awaited feature-length film, Shustak,  an award-winning documentary about the late photographer and filmmaker Larence M. Shustak, an old friend of mine who came up in the New York scene but eventually relocated to New Zealand in the 1970s.

I have a role in the film, with numerous excerpts therein drawn from a lengthy interview with me that Page conducted several years ago. Overall, I think it’s a delightful warts-and-all portrait of a complex character who was also a dedicated photographer and a devoted teacher. You can find out more about the film at Page’s website.

Simultaneously, and entirely coincidentally, the Samuel Dorsky Museum at the State University of New York-New Paltz opened “Taking a Different Tack: Maggie Sherwood and the Floating Foundation of Photography,” a show exploring the history of the FFP, a purple houseboat that graced the shoreline of Riverside Park in Manhattan for close to two decades, serving as an exhibition space for photography as well as a meeting place for people connected to the medium. This show, and its accompanying catalogue, evoke a remarkable and much-neglected era in the medium’s history.

I contributed an essay to the catalog for this show, and also lent to it the poster for an event that photographer Neal Slavin and I organized and hosted in 1972, the Market Diner Bash. Seeing the FFP show, and watching the response of attendees to the group portrait by Neal that graces the poster, I realized that it constitutes a time capsule of the New York scene circa 1972. After some discussion with Neal, he and I agreed that it was time to initiate a reunion of the participants in that event. So we have begun plans for The Market Diner Bash Redux, tentatively planned for September 2010. I’ve set up a webspace at The Nearby Café for this project; click here to see its rough beginnings, and come back periodically to watch our progress. I’ll post notes here from now on to connect you to Bash updates.

— A. D. Coleman

© Copyright 2009 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved. By permission of the author and Image/World Syndication Services, imageworld AT nearbycafe DOT com.