By Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo News Editor
EAST VILLAGE — The modern drag movement grew out of a dank dressing room in the back of an Avenue A nightclub, where Lower East Side photographer Clayton Patterson started snapping photos of gender-bending performers as they prepped for their onstage acts.
Now, some 25 years later, it’s only fitting that the longtime documentarian is having an exhibition of his portraits from the infamous Pyramid Club only blocks from where performers like RuPaul took the stage to kick-start their careers.
The show, “Pyramid Portraits,” opening on June 3 at the Esopus Space, features never-before-seen photos from Patterson’s vast archive of images chronicling the club and its fringe inhabitants.
“From an art point of view, I found it just totally amazing and inspiring,” said Patterson, who was invited to the Pyramid for the first time in the mid ’80s after shooting a drag performer outside the photographer’s Essex Street home.
“It was like people developing characters. It was a metamorphosis of creativity.”
For the next few years Patterson regularly attended drag shows at the club, earning intimate access to a group of performers who decorated themselves with found items — from lampshades to shards of broken glass — and came out looking every bit as glamorous as the divas they were channeling.
“That’s the genius of the whole thing,” he said, noting that the performers shopped at used-clothing stores to perfect their outfits on the cheap. “You had this amazing creativity, and it was within everybody’s reach.”
The affordability of the neighborhood at the time allowed the arts to flourish there, Patterson explained, from the hardcore scene at CBGB to the pop art of Keith Haring.
“These people start out talented but raw,” he said, “ambitious but unsophisticated.”
The photographer explained that instead of focusing his lens on the grittier side of the club — which was known for its raunchy and explicit performance art — he decided to elevate his subjects by framing them as beauty queens, not costumed freaks.
“Drag has always been about emulating glamorous women,” Patterson said. “I wanted them to look glamorous — I wanted the best possible look I could get, and I think I captured that.”
And while drag performance would soon hit the mainstream with acts like RuPaul, Patterson said its roots will remain on Avenue A.
“That was the life of the Lower East Side, and I loved it here, and I was looking for the best part of the people,” he said. “It’s about giving somebody the respect they deserve.”
The show runs through July 15 at the Esopus Space, 64 W. Third St., in Greenwich Village.
