Gerard Malanga

Poet and photographer Gerard Malanga, the son of Italian immigrants, was raised in the Bronx borough of New York City. Malanga began writing poetry as a teenager, and has published numerous books of poetry, including chic death (1971), Mythologies of the Heart (1996), No Respect: New And Selected Poems 1964-2000 (2001), and Cool & Other Poems (2019). Influenced by poets Paul Blackburn, Charles Olson and Charles Simic, Malanga’s expansive, free-verse poetry often engages themes of perception and intimacy. As he notes in a 2002 interview with Richard Marshall for 3am Magazine, “I've always thought of poetry as an introverted process whereas photography has always been an extroverted process. But they both involve the eye to a certain extent — both the inner eye and the outer eye.” Malanga was the chief assistant for artist Andy Warhol in the mid-1960s, with whom he founded the magazine Interview in 1969. Malanga was also featured in several of Warhol’s films, collaborated with Warhol on his “Screen Tests” project, and was a member of Warhol’s cross-genre undertaking, “The Exploding Plastic Inevitable.”