Nick Kuskin - '82, The Harlem Fantasy 01

59 x 78 cm
Signé & encadré

Impression sur Dibond
Caisse américaine

- - - - - -

In August 1982, the Harlem Fantasy (2) was an underground transvestite ball, as it was still called at the height of the Reagan-recession era. It started on a Sunday at 5am on West 125th St. a few doors west of the Apollo theater.

Pepper LaBeija emcee'd, the co-producer was Dorian Corey and Candy Stevens deejayed. It was an archetype of early '80s cultural growth emerging within Black and Latino subculture.

As a hidden source of humanity, it was familial and inclusive, pushing on the evolution of acceptance despite racism and prejudicial denial of sexual and gender fluidity.

That early morning the producers invited our small, all white, cis gender, documentary film crew to bear witness as outsiders welcomed inside for the first time since 1972.