Marcia Resnick captures Mick Jagger, and Punks, Poets and Provocateurs
Marcia Resnick first exhibited her art at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum when she was five years old. She is an alumnus of NYU, the Cooper Union and California Institute of the Arts. In 1975, she self-published artist’s books See, Landscape and Tahitian Eve. Her autobiographical book of staged photographs about female adolescence, Re-visions, first published in 1978, will be republished in 2019 by Editions Patrick Frey. According to Luc Sante, “Marcia Resnick was and remains the scene’s memory, living the life even as she chronicled it.” Punks, Poets and Provocateurs: New York City Bad Boys 1977-1982, published by Insight Editions in 2015, features her portraitsof iconic men. Her photographs can be found in numerous books and periodicals, are exhibited internationally and are in major private, and museum collections including MoMA, the Met and the National Portrait Gallery, amongst others.
Punks, Poets and Provocateurs: NYC Bad Boys 1977-1982
I taught photography by day and went out every night to CBGB’s, Max’s or the Mudd Club to hear music by bands which were mostly comprised of men. I was confounded by the male species and was photographing “Bad Boys, ” exploring the dynamic of a woman photographing men. There was a palpable electricity in the cultural milieu of NYC at that time. Rock musicians and artists alike were graduating from art schools. Painters were making films. Writers were doing performance art. Sculptors were creating installations. Artists were acting in films, making music and generally collaborating with each other. My “Bad Boys” photographs were to become my photo book “Punks, Poets and Provocateurs: NYC Bad Boys 1977-1982. Marcia Resnick
Mick Jagger
On New Year’s Eve in 1979, I had a raging case of the flu. Liz Derringer, an interviewer and the wife of musician Rick Derringer, phoned me. She asked if I would like to meet Mick Jagger so that he could decide if he wanted me to photograph him for her cover story in High Times. I grabbed my camera and a small portfolio of my work and ventured out. Mick had just shaved off the full beard that he’d grown in Paris, and his complexion appeared uncharacteristically ruddy. He felt self-conscious and didn’t want to be photographed. My flu sapped my energy and caused me to seem atypically calm and relaxed. Mick thought I was really “cool” (though my fever made me very hot) and chose me to photograph him two weeks later for Liz Derringer’s article. Several days after our initial meeting, I read on the New York Post’s Page Six that Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger were vacationing in the Caribbean, recuperating from what was probably my flu. Marcia Resnick
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat, was a graffiti artist who wrote clever phrases on city walls and tagged them SAMO. The film DOWNTOWN 81 featured both him and music by his band GRAY. His neo-expressionist paintings became the toast of the art world after being praised in Rene Ricard’s article THE RADIANT CHILD in Art Forum magazine. This photo was taken in the Mudd Club in NYC in 1978.
Marcia Resnick is represented by Deborah Bell Photo- graphs and Paul M. Hertzmann, Inc.
