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PRESS & BIO
"Geoffrey Cordner is a thrift-shop visionary whose photographs capture the underbelly of millennial America with a heart and ruthlessness that places him beyond trend and fashion, in a status all his own. Beyond his technical mastery, Cordner's particular genius is the way in which he inspires trust in his subjects, often those for whom all trust has been betrayed. Whether it's a smacked-out teenaged neo-punk or a sloe-eyed Hollywood hustler, Cordner goes beneath the ink and attitude to the damaged soul within. What Diane Arbus did for her gallery of mutants, and Nan Goldin did for her own crop of tormented hipsters, Geoff Cordner does for the denizens of his own outre universe. Having passed through international fashion and commercial advertising, album covers and rock'n'roll posters, this is a photographer who has abandoned the trappings of conventional success to bring us a world of savage, mind-blowing and relentless images the rest of us might never see." -- JERRY STAHL, author of Permanent Midnight & Perv: a Love Story
"Cordner captures that space between breaths, where photography transcends documentation and morphs into the pure essence of being. A small moment in time where the subjects drop their natural defenses and instead of posing for the shot, seem to exist forever, not trapped by their image, but for once, finally freed within it in." -- LYDIA LUNCH
"The constitution of photographer Geoff Cordner is part cut-throat visionary, part punk rock prankster. His subversive exploits are an assault on the senses." -ã CLINT CATALYST, author of Cottonmouth Kisses
"...some of the most incredible and visionary work seen during our tenure. Controversial, seeking, raw and indelibly modern, Cordner shoots from the hip and leaves the viewer with an elevated pulse, and a thick taste on the tongue of the morning after... Hard-hitting... drenched with black humor and asking big questions." --HEATHER CORRINA, Scarlet Letters
"The new Weegee" -- LEGS McNEIL, author of Please Kill Me, an Oral History of Punk Rock
"This isn't your everyday erotica, it is sweaty and it is on the way to the bathroom to screw after a speedball...you can smell the cigarettes and cheap booze...timeless and aching in a way rarely seen in modern photography." -- JANE'S GUIDE
"The Charles Bukowski of porn" -- ON OUR BACKS MAGAZINE
"A reprehensible, socially parasitic artist" -- MS MAGAZINE
BIO
Geoff Cordner was born in Tripoli, Libya in 1960, son of an American father and a French mother, and grew up in Libya, Canada and Egypt. Throughout his teenage years in Cairo, Egypt, his sole source for Western culture was Creem magazine in the heyday of Lester Bangs, inexplicably the only western pop culture magazine available in Cairo. He arrived in Austin, Texas in 1978, expecting to turn on the radio and hear Patti Smith and the Ramones, and to fit right in as an American by sole virtue of having a passport that said he was one, and instead found himself awash in a sea of Farrah Fawcett hairdos (on men and women alike) all listening to Journey, Foreigner, Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd--the soundtrack of redneck youth throughout the south. He quickly found a home in the nascent punk rock scene within which he became a person of some minor notoriety, churning out fliers for bands, putting out fanzines, doing album covers, producing records and eventually running his own indie record label. He moved to Hollywood in 1985. By 1988 he abandoned the States with a sudden move to Italy, where he reinvented himself as a fashion photographer, completely abandoning all contact with anyone heÕd known before. In 1994 after some modest success shooting fashion & high society in Europe he returned to LA where he once again found himself completely disillusioned with Hollywood. After an extended break from photography he returned to shooting for himself. A 1999 underground celebrity studded reenactment of the Manson Family murders entitled "These Children That Come At You With Knives" prompted Permanent Midnight author Jerry Stahl to call him a thrift store visionary; and the LA Weekly to unofficially ban him. A 2000 piece on body and identity issues was called genius by Lydia Lunch and denounced by Ms. Magazine as the work of a "reprehensible socially parasitic artist."
EXHIBITIONS
2004: The Museum of Erotica, (permanent collection, w/ Robert Mappelthorpe, David LaChapelle, Carlos Batts...) Los Angeles
2001: Platinum Oasis, Group show, Coral Sands Motel, (w/ Bruce La Bruce, Ron Athey, Kembra Pfahler, Ann Magnusen...) Los Angeles
2001: Group show, the Creative Center, Los Angeles
2001: Neurotica, Group show, (w/ Dave Naz, Anthony Ausgang, Stacy Lande, Justice Howard...) Holly Matter Gallery, Los Angeles
1999: Group show, Fototeka Gallery, Los Angeles
1999: Solo exhibition, "These Children that Come at You With Knives", Zero 1 Gallery, Los Angeles
1993: Solo exhibition: "Pornos" Barcelona Spain
1993: Joint exhibition, Apollo Theater, Barcelona Spain, w/ Oskar Ohlson
1992: Solo exhibition, Milan Italy
1984: Group show: Punk Poster Art UT Austin
PUBLISHED WORK & PARTIAL CLIENT LIST
Flipside Magazine, Skratch Magazine, Maximum Rock'n'Roll, While You Were Sleeping, Popsmear, Max, Vibe, Style & the Family Tunes, Genre, POZ, Bikini/Raygun, British Vogue, Elle (Paris), Mondo Oumo, King Moda, Hello, Figaro, Ola, Vanidad, Le Soir, La Stampa, Drum, Geffen Records, Lakeshore Records, EMI Records, Sony Films, Buena Vista Films, CBS Television, BET, People Magazine, TV Guide, Seventeen Magazine, Chicago Magazine, Los Angeles AIDS Committee, Tear Magazine.
MISC.
Internationally syndicated Canadian TV show SexTV recently aired a segment on Geoff Cordner's Body Image series, for which he was denounced by Ms. Magazine as a "reprehensible socially parasitic artist". Click here to see an excerpt from the show.
Click here to read an interview
"Geoffrey Cordner is a thrift-shop visionary whose photographs capture the underbelly of millennial America with a heart and ruthlessness that places him beyond trend and fashion, in a status all his own. Beyond his technical mastery, Cordner's particular genius is the way in which he inspires trust in his subjects, often those for whom all trust has been betrayed. Whether it's a smacked-out teenaged neo-punk or a sloe-eyed Hollywood hustler, Cordner goes beneath the ink and attitude to the damaged soul within. What Diane Arbus did for her gallery of mutants, and Nan Goldin did for her own crop of tormented hipsters, Geoff Cordner does for the denizens of his own outre universe. Having passed through international fashion and commercial advertising, album covers and rock'n'roll posters, this is a photographer who has abandoned the trappings of conventional success to bring us a world of savage, mind-blowing and relentless images the rest of us might never see." -- JERRY STAHL, author of Permanent Midnight & Perv: a Love Story
"Cordner captures that space between breaths, where photography transcends documentation and morphs into the pure essence of being. A small moment in time where the subjects drop their natural defenses and instead of posing for the shot, seem to exist forever, not trapped by their image, but for once, finally freed within it in." -- LYDIA LUNCH
"The constitution of photographer Geoff Cordner is part cut-throat visionary, part punk rock prankster. His subversive exploits are an assault on the senses." -ã CLINT CATALYST, author of Cottonmouth Kisses
"...some of the most incredible and visionary work seen during our tenure. Controversial, seeking, raw and indelibly modern, Cordner shoots from the hip and leaves the viewer with an elevated pulse, and a thick taste on the tongue of the morning after... Hard-hitting... drenched with black humor and asking big questions." --HEATHER CORRINA, Scarlet Letters
"The new Weegee" -- LEGS McNEIL, author of Please Kill Me, an Oral History of Punk Rock
"This isn't your everyday erotica, it is sweaty and it is on the way to the bathroom to screw after a speedball...you can smell the cigarettes and cheap booze...timeless and aching in a way rarely seen in modern photography." -- JANE'S GUIDE
"The Charles Bukowski of porn" -- ON OUR BACKS MAGAZINE
"A reprehensible, socially parasitic artist" -- MS MAGAZINE
BIO
Geoff Cordner was born in Tripoli, Libya in 1960, son of an American father and a French mother, and grew up in Libya, Canada and Egypt. Throughout his teenage years in Cairo, Egypt, his sole source for Western culture was Creem magazine in the heyday of Lester Bangs, inexplicably the only western pop culture magazine available in Cairo. He arrived in Austin, Texas in 1978, expecting to turn on the radio and hear Patti Smith and the Ramones, and to fit right in as an American by sole virtue of having a passport that said he was one, and instead found himself awash in a sea of Farrah Fawcett hairdos (on men and women alike) all listening to Journey, Foreigner, Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd--the soundtrack of redneck youth throughout the south. He quickly found a home in the nascent punk rock scene within which he became a person of some minor notoriety, churning out fliers for bands, putting out fanzines, doing album covers, producing records and eventually running his own indie record label. He moved to Hollywood in 1985. By 1988 he abandoned the States with a sudden move to Italy, where he reinvented himself as a fashion photographer, completely abandoning all contact with anyone heÕd known before. In 1994 after some modest success shooting fashion & high society in Europe he returned to LA where he once again found himself completely disillusioned with Hollywood. After an extended break from photography he returned to shooting for himself. A 1999 underground celebrity studded reenactment of the Manson Family murders entitled "These Children That Come At You With Knives" prompted Permanent Midnight author Jerry Stahl to call him a thrift store visionary; and the LA Weekly to unofficially ban him. A 2000 piece on body and identity issues was called genius by Lydia Lunch and denounced by Ms. Magazine as the work of a "reprehensible socially parasitic artist."
EXHIBITIONS
2004: The Museum of Erotica, (permanent collection, w/ Robert Mappelthorpe, David LaChapelle, Carlos Batts...) Los Angeles
2001: Platinum Oasis, Group show, Coral Sands Motel, (w/ Bruce La Bruce, Ron Athey, Kembra Pfahler, Ann Magnusen...) Los Angeles
2001: Group show, the Creative Center, Los Angeles
2001: Neurotica, Group show, (w/ Dave Naz, Anthony Ausgang, Stacy Lande, Justice Howard...) Holly Matter Gallery, Los Angeles
1999: Group show, Fototeka Gallery, Los Angeles
1999: Solo exhibition, "These Children that Come at You With Knives", Zero 1 Gallery, Los Angeles
1993: Solo exhibition: "Pornos" Barcelona Spain
1993: Joint exhibition, Apollo Theater, Barcelona Spain, w/ Oskar Ohlson
1992: Solo exhibition, Milan Italy
1984: Group show: Punk Poster Art UT Austin
PUBLISHED WORK & PARTIAL CLIENT LIST
Flipside Magazine, Skratch Magazine, Maximum Rock'n'Roll, While You Were Sleeping, Popsmear, Max, Vibe, Style & the Family Tunes, Genre, POZ, Bikini/Raygun, British Vogue, Elle (Paris), Mondo Oumo, King Moda, Hello, Figaro, Ola, Vanidad, Le Soir, La Stampa, Drum, Geffen Records, Lakeshore Records, EMI Records, Sony Films, Buena Vista Films, CBS Television, BET, People Magazine, TV Guide, Seventeen Magazine, Chicago Magazine, Los Angeles AIDS Committee, Tear Magazine.
MISC.
Internationally syndicated Canadian TV show SexTV recently aired a segment on Geoff Cordner's Body Image series, for which he was denounced by Ms. Magazine as a "reprehensible socially parasitic artist". Click here to see an excerpt from the show.
Click here to read an interview
all contents © copyright 1980-2005 geoff cordner