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RICKY POWELL PRESS RELEASE

PowerHouse Books is pleased to announce the September 2005 release of

Public Access
Ricky Powell Photographs 1985-2005

Texts by Ricky Powell, Charlie Ahearn, Glenn O'Brien, Zoe Cassavetes, ZEPHYR, QUIK, DR. REVOLT, and TEAM

A Miss Rosen Edition

"Ricky Powell, aka the Rickster, has seen a lot of history. he has worked variously as a busboy, bike messenger...Frozade vender, substitute teacher, columnist, cable television host, comic, and dog walker. But he is best known as a wisecracking, self-described 'playground rat' who used his beat-up Minolta and party-crashing skills to become a nightlife fixture and a chronicler of the then-exploding world of hip hop."
-The New York Times

"The Rickster was kinda like the Weegee of hip hop. Everywhere you went he would be there with a camera around his neck."
-Fab 5 Freddy

For two decades, Ricky Powell has prowled the streets of his native New York, toured the world with hip hop's biggest acts, and full-on crashed celebrity-studded parties on both coasts. Equipped with only his wits and an instamatic camera, Powell elbowed his way into the center of the scene with no shame. "It's for public access," Powell could be heard, pleading for an interview with a pizza shop owner on his cult cable TV show, "Rappin' with the Rickster."

Powell knows access is everything, and he delivers. In Public Access: Ricky Powell Photographs 1985-2005, Powell presents the actors, musicians, performers, and artists that inspired him, including Run DMC, Public Enemy, Rakim, Slick Rick, Eazy E, Method Man, LL Cool J, Fab 5 Freddy, Steven Tyler, Nina Hagen, John Bloodclot, John Lee Hooker, LeRoy Neiman, Martha Graham, Elizabeth Taylor, Calvin Klein, Barbara Walters, Grace Jones, Francis Ford Coppola, Sofia Coppola, Cindy Crawford, Dondi, Doze Green, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Andy Warhol, as well as everyday people Powell spotted on the street. Also presented in Public Access are Powell's never-before-published collaborations with top artists, graffiti writers, and photographers including Ron Galella, Ron English, Phil Frost, LEE QUINONES, Sam Flores, David Choe, Dalek, DR. REVOLT, ZEPHYR, QUIK, TEAM, DAZE, SEEN, KAWS, JEST, BIGFOOT, SSUR, and HAZE, among others.

"Life has been good and Ricky's photos offer the best that life offers: the pleasure of being some place at the right time and having the souvenir for tomorrow. Ricky's always got his certification in phys. ed. in case this photo thing doesn't pan out, but I've been seeing that classic Rickster flick of Flavor Flav and Biz Markie on bootleg t-shirts all over town so we know heÕs hot. And RickyÕs ready for his big bounce in O-five."
-Charlie Ahearn

Exhibitions

colette, Paris
August 29-September 25, 2005

The powerHouse Gallery, New York
October 13-November 12, 2005

Milk Bar, San Francisco
December 9-26, 2005

Lab 101 Gallery, Los Angeles
January 13-February 13, 2005

Exhibition sponsored by DigiZone

The Return of "Rappin' with The Rickster"
"Rappin' with The Rickster" returns to public access television in Fall 2005 on Manhattan Neighborhood Network.
The new show will feature in-studio and on-location footage of interviews with legends for the arts, sports, and entertainment industries. Stay tuned!

Ricky Powell, a native New Yorker, graduated from Hunter College with a B.S. in physical education. His work has been published in The New York Times, the New York Post, the Daily News, The Village Voice, Time, Newsweek, VIBE, The Source, Rolling Stone, Spin, Details, Paper, Mass Appeal, Word Up!, Ego Trip, and Grand Royal, to name a few. Powell's clients have included Cannon, MTV, NBC, the Apollo Theater, Capitol Records, and Weiden + Kennedy, among others. His work has been exhibited at the Eyejammie Fine Arts Gallery, New York and Upper Playground, San Francisco and was featured in "500 of the Greatest Rock and Roll Photos," presented by Kodak. Powell is the author of Frozade Moments (Eyejammie.com, 2005), Oh Snap!: The Rap Photography of Ricky Powell (St. Martin's, 1998) and The Rickford Files: Classic New York Photographs (St. Martin's, 1999). He lives and works in New York.

In the summer of 1980, Charlie Ahearn began working with Fred Brathwaite and Lee Quinones on the hip hop classic Wild Style, which he wrote and directed and was first screened in 1982. After producing a number of videos on artists, Ahearn wrote and directed his next feature film Fear of Fiction in 2000. With Jim Fricke, Ahearn coauthored Yes Yes Y'all: The Experience Music Project Oral History of Hip-Hop's First Decade (Da Capo Press, 2002), which featured more than one hundred photographs, many by Ahearn. Currently hosting a weekly Internet radio show on WPS1.org called "Yes Yes Y'all," Ahearn lives and works in New York.

Glenn O'Brien is a poet, essayist, novelist, screenwriter, editor, creative director, actor, stand-up comedian, producer, director, TV host, copywriter, and advice columnist. O'Brien was editor of Andy WarholÕs Interview and wrote its "Glenn O'Brien's BEAT" column for twelve years. He edited Rolling Stone, High Times, and Spin, and now edits the literary/arts journal Bald Ego. He produced and starred in "Glenn O'Brien's TV Party" from 1978 to 1982. A documentary about TV Party premiered in April 2005 at the Tribeca Film Festival, and a DVD set of "TV Party" is now available on Brink Video. O'Brien produced and wrote Downtown 81 starring Jean-Michel Basquiat. He has published a book of poetry, Human Nature (dub version) (Grey Bull Press, 2001), a book of advice, The Style Guy (Ballantine, 2000), and a book of essays, Soapbox (Imschoot, 1998). O'Brien also did those great Barneys New York and Calvin Klein ads that were investigated by the FBI. He lives in New York with his wife and two children.

Zoe Cassavetes grew up in Los Angeles and worked on many productions as a director, writer, producer, and actress. In the 1990's, she teamed up with friend Sofia Coppola to make the TV show ÒHigh Octane,Ó one of the first shows to be entirely shot in digital video. Cassavetes has also made appearances as a host of MTV's "House of Style," and acted as assistant director on feature films. Several years later, she relocated to Manhattan, where she directed her short film Men Make Women Crazy Theory, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000. Cassavetes has made numerous commercials and music videos and is in preproduction for her first feature film, Broken English. She lives in New York.

ZEPHYR is a New York City-born graffiti writer.

QUIK was unable to play baseball as a child due to a troublesome arm injury. Instead, he went on frequent subway trips to see the games played. During these trips, Lin Felton (aka QUIK) became fascinated with the graffiti that covered the trains and stations. By the time he was ten years old, Lin was skipping choir practice to tag anywhere he could, quickly becoming the uncrowned "King of the Tag" in Hollis, Queens, where he grew up. QUIK's work, which includes graffiti art and paintings and focuses on social injustice and racial discrimination, became recognized by the art world in the 1980s. He has exhibited in art galleries and museums in the United States and internationally. QUIK has also worked in the Netherlands, where he lived during the 1990s, as a director's assistant, production coordinator, set designer, and actor in avant-garde theater. QUIK is currently working with the New York City Department of Education/Special Education division and actively continues his creative output along SEEN at SEEN Studios in the Bronx. He writes a monthly column the German hip hop magazine Backspin and has contributed text to many upcoming international publications regarding urban cultures and their artists. QUIK lives in New York.

DR. REVOLT was born and raised in New York and is an original member of the historic New York City graffiti crew The Rolling Thunder Writers (RTW). REVOLT is known for tags, elaborate pieces on the 1 line with psychedelic colors and comic art-influenced stylings, and later for taking it "all-city" with his contributions to the seminal hip hop films Wild Style and Style Wars, various music videos, and album covers. He created the classic "YO! MTV Raps" logo and did a tour of duty in Baltimore where he, like a "messenger of style," single handedly kick-started a graff-scene that still feels his influence today. His place in the history of "graff-dom" is secure. His work has been, and continues to be seen in various publications and art galleries globally. DR. REVOLT lives in New York.

TEAM grew up in New York City's Greenwich Village. In the 1970s, he attended public schools P.S.41 and I.S.70. He took to art and music in school, and as the graffiti movement exploded around him he found it to be a natural outlet for his own creativity and expressionÑas well as a unique way to meet people from different backgrounds and neighborhoods. TEAM submitted his art portfolio to a city program that accepted him and placed him in a new creative arts "school within a school" at Erasmus Hall High School on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. After graduating high school in 1978 he started a band with friends called Urban Blight as the lead singer and songwriter. Like graffiti art, he found working with the band to be a vibrant form of expressionÑan outlet for him and his friends to blend their experiences of growing up in the city. The band toured throughout the 80s and mid-90s. After Urban Blight disbanded in 1995, TEAM was accepted into NYU, where he majored in digital arts and writing. He graduated with honors in 2000 and is currently working on art design and graffiti art canvases.

Miss Rosen Editions, a division of powerHouse Cultural Entertainment, is a new imprint launching in Fall 2005 spotlighting contemporary urban culture and lifestyle. Publisher Sara Rosen, Publicity Director of powerHouse Books since 2000, was Project Manager of Autograf: New York City's Graffiti Writers, the runaway best-selling art book which inspired an episode of NBC's "The Apprentice," which Miss Rosen helped to produce, as well as countless letters to the editor of The New York Times City section.

For more information, please contact Sara Rosen, Publicity Director powerHouse Books, 68 Charlton Street, New York, NY 10014 Tel: 212-604-9074 x105, fax: 212-366-5247, e-mail:sara@powerHouseBooks.com

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