Nelson Sullivan
| Nelson Sullivan | |
|---|---|
| Born |
March 15, 1948 Kershaw, South Carolina, U.S. |
| Died | July 4, 1989 (aged 41) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Davidson College |
| Occupation | Videographer |
Nelson Sullivan (March 15, 1948 - July 4, 1989) was an American videographer. He was ubiquitous on the New York City downtown art and club scene during the 1980s.
Sullivan was born in Kershaw, South Carolina, March 15, 1948. His family was upper-middle class, and from an early age he was given music lessons, with an eye toward a career as a classical pianist. After graduating from Davidson College in North Carolina in 1970, he moved to New York, part of the post-Stonewall wave of young gay men who were then heading to either San Francisco or Manhattan to partake of the more liberated lifestyle they had been reading about in newspapers and magazines. He rented a studio apartment in the West Village and soon made a decision to pursue a career as a composer. By day, Sullivan worked at Joseph Patelson Music House, the famous classical music store behind Carnegie Hall. He moved from apartment to apartment over the next ten years, never getting one quite large enough to comfortably fit his piano.
In 1980, he saw a building on the corner of Gansevoort and 9th Avenue in the Meat Packing District with a rental sign on the door. The price was right, and the dilapidated old duplex was soon the center of a unique, revolving universe of friends and scene-makers. It also became a hotel, way-station, and halfway house for people either visiting or moving to the city. Artists, musicians, and performers dropped by at all hours to hang out, and it was this feeling of an ongoing 24-hour salon that gave Sullivan the idea to begin videotaping his life. His best friend and constant companion was a black Labrador Retriever named Blackout.
Like many in the early 1980s, Sullivan recognized an unlimited potential in the advent of the new inexpensive handheld video cameras then coming on the market. Using first a cumbersome VHS-loading camera and later upgrading to an 8mm video camera, he shot over 1,900 hours of tape over a period of seven years, capturing himself and his friends in the glossy façade of Manhattan's downtown life that has been perpetuated in urban legend. He sought to tape all of New York's citizens, including its outcasts, striving to candidly capture their lives. He taped anything and everything that interested him - outrageous performances in bars and clubs, swinging house parties, chaotic gallery openings, park and street festivals, late-night ruminations of his friends, absurd conversations with taxi drivers, prosaic sunset walks with his dog on the then-still-existing west side piers, and a variety of curious behaviour on the part of people he met on the streets of New York City.
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