We spoke with artist and documentarian Clayton Patterson for the latest episode of The Lo-Down Culture Cast. Clayton has been living and working on the Lower East Side since 1979. He’s known for his portraits of the wide array of people representing the street culture of the LES in front of his front door on Essex Street as well as his rebellious designs for what became known as the “Clayton Cap,” which he created with his long-time partner, Elsa.
Clayton is a street photographer who has always been interested documenting outsiders, renegades, activists and people creating art on the fringes of the cultural mainstream. The New Yorker has dubbed him “The Lower East Side’s Folk Historian.” For a photo exhibit called “Clayton Patterson: L.E.S. Captured” in 2009, Clayton told the New York Times, “I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was capturing the last of the wild, free, outlaw, utopian, visionary spirit of the Lower East Side.”
He’s been featured by VICE, Hypebeast and Elle Magazine, among others, and currently has a show featuring some of his “Front Door” photos as part of Photoville, in collaboration with Abrons Arts Center, on the exterior gates of LES Coleman Skate Park (corner of Monroe and Pike Streets) and at The Martin Luther King Jr. Community Park (216 E. Broadway).
