Bob Colacello
Henry Kissinger Holding Forth, Washington D.C., 1977
Gelatin silver print
32 x 45 x 2 inches
© Bob Colacello; Courtesy the artist and Vito Schnabel Gallery
Despite the uninterrupted programming of our reality TV presidency, Washington D.C. has never felt further away from the cultural milieu of Los Angeles, or New York City, for that matter. It wasn’t always this way Bob Colacello likes say. The former editor-in-chief of these pages, and its erstwhile photographer, has a new show at Vito Schnabel Projects, Pictures From Another Time, that reveals a moment when the distance between politics and culture was collapsed. While Colacello is quick to announce his amateurism, he was expert in photographing, and instigating, the collisions of political elites with the doyens of the downtown New York art world that took place during the 1970s and 1980s “I like to think what we were really focusing on was the glamour,” Colacello says, describing his and Andy Warhol’s shared fascination with the politicians and leaders of that moment.