Edited with text by Albert Scopin. Text by Michael Stoeber.
An unfiltered photo album capturing the gritty glamor of New York's creative soul from 1969 to 1971
From 1969 to 1971, the photographer and filmmaker Albert Scopin lived in the creative soul of New York, the Chelsea Hotel. An assistant to photographers and fellow residents Mikel Avedon and Bill King, the young Scopin began to document the hotel's lively goings-on as discreetly as possible, aiming for an unfiltered view of its inhabitants. His resulting images depict an as-yet-unknown Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe as a fledgling couple; film directors Wim Wenders, Rosa von Praunheim, Milos Forman and Jonas Mekas; a staged production by the Warhol crowd; a raucous basement party thrown by the hotel staff; and occupants contemplating the future up on the roof. Chelsea Hotel presents Scopin's diaristic photographs in book form for the first time. The images are accompanied by brief contextualizing texts as well as an interview with the photographer regarding his dizzying years in the world-famous hotel. Albert Scopin (born 1943) was born in Freiburg, Germany. In 1969 he moved to New York and became a studio assistant for Mikel Avedon and Bill King, while living out of a room in the Chelsea Hotel and falling in with Andy Warhol's crowd. Scopin moved back to Germany in the mid–1970s and continues to work as an independent artist.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
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Jonathan Bell
Using a simple Kodak Instamatic, Scopin’s candid imagery captures the bohemian underworld in all its unvarnished glory, with Warhol’s Factory acolytes serving at bit part players amidst a cast of genuine eccentrics and innovators. A valuable piece of artistic, social and LGBTQ+ history.
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“Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith were close friends of mine from 1967 to 1972,” photographer Albert Scopin writes in this new book of recently rediscovered photographs. Taken while Scopin was living at NYC’s infamous Chelsea Hotel, collectively the pictures capture a distant, uninhibited bohemia populated by artists, Superstars, drag queens and runaways. “Everyone could have a stab at their own idea of a ‘free life,’” he writes. Here, Mapplethorpe is pictured in his studio on the ground floor of the Chelsea annexe. “The first time I visited him there in 1970 he was working on erotic collages that were fantastically bold. The next year he started experimenting with Polaroid material. Later he said of that experimental phase: ‘I began to understand that photography can be art.’” continue to blog
FORMAT: Pbk, 8.25 x 10.25 in. / 176 pgs / 118 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $50.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $72 ISBN: 9783735610478 PUBLISHER: Kerber Verlag AVAILABLE: 4/21/2026 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA LA ME
Published by Kerber Verlag. Edited with text by Albert Scopin. Text by Michael Stoeber.
An unfiltered photo album capturing the gritty glamor of New York's creative soul from 1969 to 1971
From 1969 to 1971, the photographer and filmmaker Albert Scopin lived in the creative soul of New York, the Chelsea Hotel. An assistant to photographers and fellow residents Mikel Avedon and Bill King, the young Scopin began to document the hotel's lively goings-on as discreetly as possible, aiming for an unfiltered view of its inhabitants. His resulting images depict an as-yet-unknown Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe as a fledgling couple; film directors Wim Wenders, Rosa von Praunheim, Milos Forman and Jonas Mekas; a staged production by the Warhol crowd; a raucous basement party thrown by the hotel staff; and occupants contemplating the future up on the roof. Chelsea Hotel presents Scopin's diaristic photographs in book form for the first time. The images are accompanied by brief contextualizing texts as well as an interview with the photographer regarding his dizzying years in the world-famous hotel.
Albert Scopin (born 1943) was born in Freiburg, Germany. In 1969 he moved to New York and became a studio assistant for Mikel Avedon and Bill King, while living out of a room in the Chelsea Hotel and falling in with Andy Warhol's crowd. Scopin moved back to Germany in the mid–1970s and continues to work as an independent artist.
