Gucci Celebrates Photographer Paige Powell With an In-Store Installation

Gucci Celebrates Photographer Paige Powell With an In-Store Installation

<h1 class="title">The <em>Beulah Land</em> installation</h1><cite class="credit">Photo: Pablo Enriquez for Gucci</cite>

The Beulah Land installation

Photo: Pablo Enriquez for Gucci
<h1 class="title">Paige Powell</h1><cite class="credit">Photo: BFA</cite>

Paige Powell

Photo: BFA
<h1 class="title">Ellen von Unwerth</h1><cite class="credit">Photo: BFA</cite>

Ellen von Unwerth

Photo: BFA
<h1 class="title">Lili Sumner</h1><cite class="credit">Photo: BFA</cite>

Lili Sumner

Photo: BFA
<h1 class="title">Adam Eli</h1><cite class="credit">Photo: BFA</cite>

Adam Eli

Photo: BFA
<h1 class="title">Andre Walker</h1><cite class="credit">Photo: BFA</cite>

Andre Walker

Photo: BFA
<h1 class="title">Fran Leibowitz and Francesco Clemente</h1><cite class="credit">Photo: BFA</cite>

Fran Leibowitz and Francesco Clemente

Photo: BFA
<h1 class="title">Ruben and Isabel Toledo</h1><cite class="credit">Photo: BFA</cite>

Ruben and Isabel Toledo

Photo: BFA
<h1 class="title">Racquel Chevremont, Mickalene Thomas, and Kim Hastreiter</h1><cite class="credit">Photo: BFA</cite>

Racquel Chevremont, Mickalene Thomas, and Kim Hastreiter

Photo: BFA
<h1 class="title">Danny Bowien (left)</h1><cite class="credit">Photo: BFA</cite>

Danny Bowien (left)

Photo: BFA

What year is it? Inside Gucci’s Wooster Street store last night, you could have sworn it was some time in the early ’80s, based solely on the bumping music, lamé ensembles, and photos of Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and Madonna plastered on the walls. Add in a couple fuchsia pink cocktails, and, well, you might still be thinking that this morning. This debaucherous, old–New York vibe came courtesy of Paige Powell, a photographer who was exhibiting many never-before-seen photos of her life and times in Manhattan in the ’70s and ’80s.

Powell, who now lives in Portland and was an employee at Interview magazine and close friend of Warhol’s, documented her daily life with a playful, sometimes irreverent eye. Through her friend Wilfredo Rosado, she was connected to Gucci, which gave Powell carte blanche to make an installation in its store and publish a monolithic book of her work. “They said, ‘We want to do exactly what you want to do,’ all the way through,” Powell beamed at the party, where she was overcome with well-wishers like Fran Leibowitz and Francesco Clemente.

Seeing her work revived on this scale was “surreal and very trippy,” she said. “This particular film behind you, it’s just myself and Keith Haring at Andy’s studio, and I just filmed him all day. No one has seen this. It was just the two of us.”

Beulah Land, a room installation made up of Powell’s photographs originally created in 1984, serves as the centerpiece of Gucci’s store too. Visitors can enter and relive New York’s heyday until May 17.

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