Eight photos of the quirkiest groups in 70s and 80s US

To celebrate the joy of being together, photographer Neil Slavin presents eight group portraits taken between 1972 and 1991. They demonstrate both the unity and particularity of American life.

It’s been 50 years since photographer Neil Slavin began traveling across the United States to document the nation’s diverse and often bizarre group gatherings. To commemorate this anniversary, a new edition of this body of work, When Two Or More are Gathered Together, has been published.

Slavin’s themes, he writes, “affirm the joy of being together rather than apart” and reveal the different ways people find common ground. A wide range of people from society are depicted, including bingo players, stockbrokers, housemaids, and grave diggers. Some groups, such as the Tall Social Club, invite normalcy to its limits. Some share their passions, from penny-farthing bicycles to bodybuilding.

Slavin prefers to pose his subjects as he wishes, bringing natural hierarchies and group dynamics to the fore. “I watch people jockey for position, sticking their shoulders out in front of the next person, smiling broadly, while others retreat into the background, waiting for something bigger, So it’s just about being part of a group,” he writes. Book.

When the first images were published in 1976, the book was a breakthrough in demonstrating the potential of the new medium of color photography. Now 54 photos have been added, some taken in 2023, which feel particularly relevant as a celebration of Slavin’s sense of togetherness in an increasingly individualistic digital age. Masu. Here are eight highlights from this book.

At the Capitol Wrestling Corporation photoshoot in Washington, D.C., where he was chosen for the book’s cover, Slavin was full of anticipation. “My dad and I used to watch this kind of wrestling on Channel 11, so we were really elated when we ended up finding them,” the Brooklyn-born photographer told the BBC. He had hoped to shoot them in action, but the scheduled event ended up “relegating them to the men’s locker room.” Shaking hands with Gorilla Monsoon (top right) turned out to be an event in itself. “His hands were bigger than my head,” Slavin jokes. But despite their bravado and contrived bravado, “the camaraderie between them was incredible,” he says. “They talked about everything, and I think that’s what made this picture.”

“I love that photo,” Slavin says of the bingo club in St. Petersburg, Florida. “To me, it just smells like honest humanity. It’s not humor. It’s human.” The players sit in the same seats each time they gather, but they come together to fit in a photo. “They want to document that they were there at a certain time in history,” Slavin explains. “There’s a social construct between all these people,” he added, noting their different reactions to the camera. Some hold out their chests, some lean forward, and some stand up to be seen. “That’s what I’m looking for. When I’m at my best, I find a story in the group, and it’s fascinating.”

Slavin asked the Los Angeles yogis to adopt several positions before settling on this headstand. Although the success of color photography is clear here, it took time for Slavin and others to overcome the widespread snobbery that favored black and white. “We broke barriers,” he says. Most appealing to him was the additional information that color provided. “It really opened up a whole amazing world for me,” he says. Slavin, always an outsider, was both confused and fascinated by yogis. He was inspired by the 19th century historian and sociologist Alexis De, who observed that, in contrast to his native France, Americans instinctively form groups in almost every aspect of life, creating mini-democracies. -References Tocqueville. Slavin worries that the digital age threatens the physicality of these connections. “We mourn the destruction of the very basic tribalism that has allowed us to survive for thousands of years,” he says.

The Star Trek convention in Brooklyn, New York, was an even more troubling affair. “I don’t think there’s any heart in this,” Slavin says with his usual frankness. In the case of wrestlers, he claims, “the pulse is very clear,” but this group, which gathered annually to exchange memorabilia and keep alive the memory of Star Trek’s original series, is far more pervasive. It was difficult. “it was [just] People dress up,” he shrugs. “They don’t know much about each other. They didn’t have the energy to come together and change the dynamic. “Their interest was purely to look at the camera and pretend that they weren’t. But he considers the picture a success: “It shows a sociological rift,” he says. Apart from that. ”

To Slavin’s knowledge, a twin painting of this scale had never been created before. “I really wanted to do it,” he says. This time, he says, “you can feel a more vibrant pulse from the group,” but it became a little overwhelming. In the center, Chicago models Levona and Laverda, in pink dresses, hold the trophy for most similar twins in their age category. They then invited Slavin to dinner at a local cafe with her twin boyfriends, Larry and Jerry. “The whole room was filled with twins, and they started talking in Twin Talk, finishing each other’s sentences,” Slavin recalls. “In the end, I couldn’t keep up with them, so I had to excuse myself from dinner.”

Another metier of Slavin, movie directorhe was of great help ten years later when he photographed an entire floor of stockbrokers at the New York Stock Exchange. explained Photographer Joe McNally hailed it as “the toughest crowd in the world”. As a director, Slavin says, “If you can’t make friends with 1,000 people in 30 seconds, you’re dead.” Group portraiture is a “misunderstood genre,” he says, and its low status, “a cross that I have to carry.” This ambitious image with its mirror-like symmetry can reach its potential in the right hands. “It seems so harmless and easy, but it’s actually a very difficult genre, because you’re looking for more than just a sea of ​​faces,” he says. But if things go well, “the rewards are great.”

This approach is also evident in this strikingly cinematic image of Washington, D.C. fencers. This was a request from the Washington Post, but it was Slavin’s idea to go to the Ritz-Carlton’s grand ballroom and perform this theatrical scene. This is a strong example of his love of counterpoint, moving his gaze from the pianist in the background to the diner eating a bagel in the front right. “Fencing had all these things. [such as chivalry] “It’s embedded in our culture and expressed in these swords,” Slavin says. In this image, Slavin takes it to a new level. “Fencing paintings are something I dreamed of, kind of,” he says. powerfulAnd I remembered directors like Kurosawa and Scorsese. ”

Even funnier than this frozen image of 15 pugs panting with furrowed brows were the moments leading up to it. The handlers tried to hide behind the curtain, but crazy hands and faces kept peeking out, trying to get the pugs to pose. “The dogs were calmer than the people. The dogs were really nice, but the people were desperate to see them!” Slavin laughs. “I said, ‘You know what? This is crazy. Let’s open the curtains.'” The results were much better with Slavin’s intervention, and the peeking faces of pet owners showed their amusement at their pets. The story was told with a mixture of self-consciousness and pride. . He says that what all his photographs have in common is a “tribalism” that he sees as a positive thing. “The group all at once It opened me up to a whole universe of possibilities. As humans, we belong to groups. You identify with others, whether it’s a labor group, a feminist group, a baseball league, whatever it is. ”