Albert Scopin: Chelsea Hotel

http://www.renaud-bray.com

http://www.renaud-bray.com

An unfiltered photo album capturing the gritty glamor of New York's creative soul from 1969 to 1971From 1969 to 1971, the photographer and filmmaker Albert Scopin lived in the creative soul of New York, the Chelsea Hotel. An assistant to photographers and fellow residents Mikel Avedon and Bill King, the young Scopin began to document the hotel's lively goings-on as discreetly as possible, aiming for an unfiltered view of its inhabitants. His resulting images depict an as-yet-unknown Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe as a fledgling couple; film directors Wim Wenders, Rosa von Praunheim, Milos Forman and Jonas Mekas; a staged production by the Warhol crowd; a raucous basement party thrown by the hotel staff; and occupants contemplating the future up on the roof. Chelsea Hotel presents Scopin's diaristic photographs in book form for the first time. The images are accompanied by brief contextualizing texts as well as an interview with the photographer regarding his dizzying years in the world-famous hotel.Albert Scopin (born 1943) was born in Freiburg, Germany. In 1969 he moved to New York and became a studio assistant for Mikel Avedon and Bill King, while living out of a room in the Chelsea Hotel and falling in with Andy Warhol's crowd. Scopin moved back to Germany in the mid–1970s and continues to work as an independent artist.