Chelsea Hotel Portraits Captures the “End of the Party” in Big Black & White Photos

It’s no secret that the new management of the renovated Hotel Chelsea would rather have had the permanent tenants of the hotel disembark for alternative residences. But in truth, it is precisely those personalities that created the Hotel’s popularity, and perpetuate the reputation upon which it profits. One of those residents is not only an embodiment of the legacy, he has captured many of the outrageous, iconic and legendary personalities who created that very mystique in a series of photographs, now being shown publicly for the first time in a gallery setting, the Chelsea Hotel Portraits at ACA Gallery’s new expansion on 10th Avenue in Chelsea.

The artist responsible is Tony Notarberardino, an Australian native, who retains only a hint of that Aussie accent, having moved to New York thirty years ago, in 1994. He studied fine art and black and white photography at the prestigious Photography Studies College in South Melbourne, but when asked how he began, he replies, simply, it is “all I’ve always done.”

This immersion in his work is obvious in each photograph, taken with a large format camera, and many of which he developed himself in a make-shift dark room in his own bathroom at the hotel. His apartment is no less artistic than his photography, a carnivalesque one-bedroom featuring vibrant red and yellow striped walls, spectacular chandeliers and ceilings painted by fellow paesana Vali Myers.

One wall in that storied apartment is the backdrop for most of the images in this exhibition. In reality, it is a textured, glossy blood red, but as Noteberardino’s work is strictly black and white, it appears a luminous gunmetal in the photographs. The silver gelatin prints provide stunningly detailed images that exude a sense of history and mystery, grit and glamor.

Notarberardino says he “captured the end of the party,” that era where New York started to spiff up its image, crack down on crime and anesthetize the sultry underworld that thrived throughout the early ‘90s. Against this wall, he captured celebrities that epitomized that time, from immediately recognizable names such as Debbie Harry and Grace Jones, to other flamboyant characters that have a much more niche celebrity, but were instrumental to the scene. It also features individuals fundamental to the hotel itself, such as the iconic Staney Bard, who Notarberardino claims “helped create the whole legend of the Chelsea Hotel,” and those that only true insiders would recognize, like “Trash Man” José Reramos, plus two waiters from the original El Quijote back in 1998, long before its recent renovation and reimagination.

Some of the photos are somewhat graphic; there is no attempt to gloss over any grit his subjects embody. In truth, that rawness is precisely the point. There is a visceral beauty in the imperfections, outrageousness and audacity of each individual. Storme DeLarverie, deemed the “Rosa Parks” of the LGBTQ movement, is depicted with a profound black eye, apparently procured in a bar fight at the fiesty age of 89 or so, which is all the more apt given their claim to fame of allegedly having thrown the first punch at the Stonewall Riots, and paid their rent at the Hotel by working as the overnight switchboard attendant at the front desk.

Dee Dee Ramone, having freshly shorn his signature shag down to his bare skull, somewhat reminiscent of the tatto on his right pec. Amanda Lepore, in all her nipped, cinched and tucked glory. Rose Wood, her angular face painted in full white-washed, theatrical makeup... but clad in little else.

The Chelsea Hotel Portraits celebrates a bygone era, as well as the residents, poster children and keepers of the hotel that housed it. Some of the subjects were (and are) performers at such legendary New York Venues as The Slipper Room and The House of Yes, and more recently The Box. But the Hotel was their clubhouse, and Notarberardino’s work provides a glimpse into that fantastical world that most New Yorkers, and truly most of the world, only knows of from film and fable. They are images, like their subjects, like you’ve never seen before, and quite possibly never will again.