Photographer Jeremy Kost's Decade of '15 Minutes'
By Michael H. Miller 5/15 5:55pm
http://galleristny.com/2012/05/15/photographer-jeremy-kosts-decade-of-15-minutes/ (http://galleristny.com/2012/05/15/photographer-jeremy-kosts-decade-of-15-minutes/)
Jeremy Kost, whose photographs of drag queens, transsexuals and celebrities are being exhibited alongside Warhol's Polaroids at a temporary gallery at 150 11th Avenue, says he's fond of freaks. He began his career in "the bowels of the East Village" (that's his phrase for it) essentially by accident.
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The camera, he says, became a way of guarding himself, yet he was increasingly drawn to these characters. That first night, he wanted to "get the f--- out of there," but he also met Amanda Lepore, the transgender model who would become something of a muse for him.
Over the next decade, he created what is probably one of the largest contemporary documents of the club scene in New York. His show, however, has an ominous subtext: the medium that both he and Warhol worked in—the Polaroid—is already extinct. All the film expired in 2009 and, at this point, it costs about $4.00 per frame. His studio in Hell's Kitchen is filled with boxes of expired film that he buys in bulk wherever he can find it (sometimes off the backs of trucks parked in alleyways, like a drug deal).