Clayton Patterson and his wife Elsa Rensaa came to New York City from Canada in 1979. Four years later, they bought a small storefront building on the Lower East Side, and began to document the history, social life, and politics of the neighborhood. Walking the streets of the Lower East Side opened opportunities to create an amazing body of photography. Over the years they developed possibly the largest inner-city archive in America—hundreds of thousands of photos, plus videos and street ephemera. In 1988, Patterson and Rensaa made a video that became known as the Tompkins Square Park Police Riot tape. In 1986 they turned their storefront into the Clayton Gallery & Outlaw Art Museum. Since 2013, Clayton has organized the annual Acker Awards to pay tribute to such artists and the community members who support them. Clayton has also edited and published a number of books on Lower East Side history, culture and politics, including Captured: A Film & Video History of the Lower East Side; Resistance: A Radical Social and Political History of the Lower East Side; and the three-volume Jews: A People’s History of the Lower East Side Volume 1,2,3.
September 10 @ 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
OFFBEATS Sidewalk Book Launch