Above: A photo of John Lennon, taken in 1972 by Lou Gaudiosi, from a series to go on exhibit this weekend at Andes Art and Antiques.
Tomorrow, a set of photographs taken of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, which apparently have been languishing unseen for nearly forty years, will go on exhibit at the Andes Art and Antiques Gallery, a small gallery in a rural Catskills town.
Photographer Lou Gaudiosi, who was a teenager when he took the photos of the couple in their apartment in New York City's West Village, said that he took them on assignment for Rock Magazine, and that most of the photos from the day's shoot were never published. Gaudiosi was only in the music photography business for a short time, but he said that during his brief career, he photographed some of the musical icons of the day, including Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones.
"I spent many times with a lot of rock-and-roll people, and John and Yoko were some of the most lovely people I spent time with," he said.
We sent images of several of the photos to University of California-Irvine professor Jon Wiener, a Lennon biographer and the author of Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files.
Wiener says that he's never seen these images before, and said that they do appear to have been taken in the Bank Street apartment that Lennon and Ono occupied between 1971 and 1972.
"There are a couple of pictures from Bank Street, and they're pretty much all the same pictures,“ he said. "These are different."
Lennon "famously spent a lot of time in bed watching TV" in the Bank Street apartment, Weiner wrote in an email. Commenting on the image above, he wrote: "There's the bed and 1972 TV remote control."
About the photos surfacing, Wiener said, "This doesn't happen very often."
Merna Popper, proprietor of the tiny gallery on Andes's Main Street, is amazed that the photographs came into her hands. She says a local couple, whose daughter is Gaudiosi's partner, came into the gallery a few months ago with a bag of negatives from the shoot.
"What are the odds? This teeny, tiny gallery up in the mountains," Popper said. "I still don't know how they found me."
Popper contacted Gaudiosi and purchased the rights to develop and show the photographs.
It seems incredible that these images should have remained hidden for over 30 years after Lennon's untimely death. But Popper says she got lucky.
"There are still Rembrandts being found," she said.
A press release put out by the gallery describes the setting:
The 1970s are vividly recorded with objects that surround the iconic musician. Always a cigarette between his fingers-- before the dangers of smoking were made known. A plaque on the wall reads The Pope Smokes Dope, and lovers of musical instruments will find interest in the views of Lennon, cross-legged on his bed, surrounded by his guitars and other instruments, and his music can almost be heard in these images.
Popper has made a gift of one of the prints of the couple to Ono, who has a summer home in the Catskills. Popper said that she's holding out hope that perhaps Ono might show up to the opening tomorrow.
"He has in these pictures such attentiveness to her, like everything she says is brilliant," Popper said.
To develop and print the negatives, Popper recruited photographer Annie Gohde, who runs Annie's Community Darkroom in Schenevus and works in the art department at SUNY Hartwick. There are 23 images in the series, and each will have a limited run of ten silver gelatin prints, each priced between $1,200 and $3,800.
Recently, another set of never-before-seen Beatles photographs, taken by a teenage photographer at the band's first US show in 1964, was put up for auction at Christie's and valued at over $100,000.
Popper says she's had offers to buy the entire collection outright, but has declined.
"For one thing, I wanted to have this show," she laughs.
As for Gaudiosi, he says he's long since left the world of photography behind.
"It's such a past lifetime for me," he said. "I was a child. And you know something? We were all children in those days."
"John Lennon: The Way He Was - 1972." On exhibit at Andes Art & Antiques, 173 Main Street, Andes July 2 - September 5. 845.676.3420.
Below: Gallery owner Merna Popper with a print from the show. Photo by Lissa Harris.
