Subway to Studio 54

Subway to Studio 54

Skaters, dancers, hustlers, boxers … Swiss photographer Willy Spiller prowled the streets of the Big Apple from 1977 to 1985. Leroy in Harlem, 1984 Sunday Morning on Orchard Street, NY, 1980 Whether he focused his camera on subway rides, dancers at the legendary...
A Brief History of Transformers

A Brief History of Transformers

This simple electrical device does much of the fundamental work of modern civilization, and it does so modestly and invisibly. An early AC transformer constructed by George Westinghouse in the 1890s.  I have always disliked exaggerated claims of imminent scientific and...
Nightclubbing

Nightclubbing

Nightclubbing is the fifth studio album by Jamaican singer and songwriter Grace Jones, released on 11 May 1981. Like Josephine Baker nearly 50 years before her, it was when Jamaican-born Grace Jones left New York City and went to Paris in 1970 that she went from being...
New York’s Graffiti Scene in the 70s and 80s

New York’s Graffiti Scene in the 70s and 80s

Subway Art, originally published in 1984, introduced New York City’s graffiti to the world. A new edition produced by Thames & Hudson features over 70 photographs by Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfont, not in the original edition, showing classic NYC street art....
Sisters with Transistors

Sisters with Transistors

Inside the Film About Electronic Music’s Forgotten Pioneers They turned drawings into symphonies and made black boxes sing. Why were they never given their due? The maker of a new film, full of revealing archive footage, aims to put this right Turned down Hitchcock …...