Jane Dickson: Witness

Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects presents Jane Dickson: Witness, a selection of works from the new monograph Jane Dickson in Times Square, published by Anthology LLC and produced by Boo-Hooray.

Jane Dickson is known for her paintings of pre-gentrification Times Square, where she lived and worked in the early 1980s with her husband, filmmaker, Charlie Ahearn, and their two children. After graduating from Harvard, Jane arrived in Times Square in 1978, and found a job programming the first Spectracolor electronic sign. She went on to curate a remarkable group of her artist friends—including Jenny Holzer, Keith Haring, and David Hammons—to make pieces for the Spectracolor billboard on Times Square. Two years later, she moved with her husband to live on 43rd Street and 8th Avenue. 

Dickson captured the neon, the sex industry, the damaged souls and vital subcultures, which flourished in Times Square, which would be swallowed up by gentrification in the following decades. As its primary visual chronicler, Jane Dickson memorialized rough and tumble Times Square. She later investigated other subcultures of American life—demolition derby, casinos, amusement parks and the open highway. 

The new monograph includes a selection the artist’s working photographs of Times Square, reproduced for the first time. Dickson’s photography went past shoot from the hip documentation. She photographed the world below her window and the underground scene of male and female strip clubs. When she couldn’t get into these clubs, she recreated scenes with her friends. She staged street images, such as Support, with friends as actors. Dickson created fictions from the chaotic Times Square street life that surrounded her just as her husband Charlie Ahearn was working in between documentary and fiction in filming it.