New York Life

About the Artist

New York Life: Images After the Fall
Photography by Gerard Van der Leun
Harlow’s Fine Art, 332 Forest, Suite 7
Laguna Beach, Calif. 92651
949/376-6075
February 29, 2004 through May 2004

Gerard Van der Leun, Lucia, Highway 1, California

Gerard Van der Leun (b. 1945) grew up in Paradise, California. He denies ever pushing his younger brother Tom over that ledge.

Following some radical years at UC Berkeley in the sixties, he created and published two magazines in San Francisco, CITY MAGAZINE and the at-the-time-controversial ORGAN.

He was also Directory of Drama and Literature for KPFA-FM in Pacifica, Calif.; the first Director of Communications for the Electronic Frontier Foundation; and an early and influential member of the pioneering online community The Well.

Over a 30-year period in New York – with extended stints in London, Paris, and Portugal – Van der Leun was senior editor and director of Paperback Publishing at Houghton Mifflin; a writer and editor for PENTHOUSE magazine; European publisher for OMNI magazine; and author of two books: The Rules of the Net and The Quotable Sherlock Holmes. His articles on technology and the Internet have appeared in WIRED and TIME magazines, among others; are used in college courses to this day; and have been widely reproduced online, as has been his poetry.

A longtime photographer, Van der Leun became even more obsessed with documenting New York City after 9/11. “Sometime in January of 2002, I knew I was leaving but I didn’t know how or when,” he said. “And I wanted to take as much of it with me as I could when it was time to go.” So he spent weeks and months wandering around the city taking over 10,000 pictures.

“I took pictures of signs, people, parks, buildings – everything. I wanted to have a record that was more than just my personal snapshots. They used to say that the camera steals the soul. If so, that’s what I wanted to do.”

His photos capture, with stunning immediacy, a recovering city and its inhabitants in all their pain, joy, strangeness, and splendor.

Gerard Van der Leun now lives in Laguna Beach, California with his wife and stepson, where he publishes the increasingly popular weblog American Digest. an online chronicle of unapologetic, biased, and erudite views on politics, culture, and the amazing diversity of American life and beyond.

New York Life: Images After the Fall opens with an artist's reception, Sunday, February 29, 2004, 12-4 p.m., at Harlow's Fine Art in Laguna Beach. The show runs through April 2004.

Harlow's Fine Art
332 Forest Ave., Suite 7
Forest Avenue Mall
Laguna Beach, California

For more information, contact:
Ashley LaJune, Gallery Owner
949/376-6075
infobites@aol.com

www.NewYorkLifeImages.com

Gerard Van der Leun, San Francisco, 2002

BEYOND REVENGE

CLICK HERE to download a hi-res version of this image.

Harlow's Fine Art Owner Ashley LaJune

The Wound, From American Digest

Multimedia work dedicated to Simon Dedvukaj

The following is from a post titled, The Wound, on Van der Leun's American Digest. Read the full article here.

"Simon Dedvukaj, 26, Mohegan Lake, N.Y. janitorial, foreman, ABM Industries Confirmed dead, World Trade Center, at/in building"

For two weeks, my days and nights have been spent reviewing some 3,000 photographs I made of New York City in 2002. Of these, I will select about 200 for an exhibition in the southern California hamlet of Laguna Beach.

Laguna is a continent and a universe away from my New York of 2002, but I’ve had little to do with its beaches, galleries, and pleasant open-air cafes of late. Instead, it has been my task to select small slivers of time from another life and arrange them to tell one of the many stories of New York in that first year of its unsought new era.

Everyone who was in New York on “The Day” will tell you their stories about “The Day.” I could stun you with an eight figure number by running a Google on 9/11, but you can do that as well.

“The Day,” even at this close remove, has ascended into that shared museum of the mind to be placed in the diorama captioned, “Where Were You When.” The site has long since been cleared and scrubbed clean. There is even an agreement on the memorial which will, I see, use a lot of water and trees. “The Day” has become both memorial and myth.

Less is heard about the aftermath. Less is said about the weeks and months that spun out from that stunningly clear and bright September morning whose sky was slashed by a towering fist of flame and smoke. You forget the smoke that hung over the city like a widow’s shawl as the fires burned on for months. You don’t know about the daily commutes by subway wondering if some new horror was being swept towards you as the train came to a stop deep beneath the East River. You supress hearing over the loudspeaker, always unclearly, that the train was being “held for police activity at Penn Station.” Was that a bomb, poison gas, a mass shooting, a strike on the Empire State building? You were never sure. You carried a flashlight in case you had to walk out of the tunnels that ran deep beneath the river. Terror was your quiet companion. After the first six weeks you barely knew it was there.

From a post titled, The Wound, on Van der Leun's American Digest. Read the full article here.

That was then, this is now.

You only have to spend a few minutes on Van der Leun’s website, American Digest, to get a pretty clear idea as to his political and cultural leanings. But as these images from a 1966 issue of The Saturday Evening Post attest, it wasn’t always that way.

Of several ‘Letters to the Editor” printed in response to this article, the one that follows was written by Van der Leun’s father, and reflects the timeless concern – sigh – of parents everywhere.

Pictures from an exhibition, February 29, 2004

Check out pictures taken in preparation for the show and at the opening here.

notes, daybook entries, and collaged pieces.

“Prior to 9/11, I was living the good life, working in the City, and was fairly Liberal in my views,” Van der leun said. “After 9/11, I did a 180-degree turn. It made me question everything I ever believed in. And I didn’t like the answers. It made me reexamine my priorities. And ultimately, it brought me here to Laguna Beach.”

“We need to remember and honor those who lost their lives at The World Trade Center,” said Harlow’s owner Ashley LaJune. “Not just once a year, but always and forever. Showing Gerard's photography, which commemorates New York City on such a personal level, is just one way we can demonstrate our love and concern for all those who were lost on 9/11.”

About the artist
Gerard Van der Leun (b. 1945) grew up in Paradise, California. Over a 30-year period in New York – with extended stints in London, Paris, and Portugal – Van der Leun was senior editor and director of Paperback Publishing at Houghton Mifflin; a writer and editor for PENTHOUSE magazine; European publisher for OMNI magazine; and author of two books: The Rules of the Net and The Quotable Sherlock Holmes. His articles on technology and the Internet have appeared in WIRED and TIME magazines, among others; are used in college courses to this day; and have been widely reproduced online, as has been his poetry. Gerard Van der Leun now lives in Laguna Beach, California with his wife and stepson, where he publishes the popular weblog American Digest .