CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 10/29/2013

'Richard Corman: Madonna' Captures the 1980s

This new photobook, just out from Damiani, captures Madonna, blazing hot, at the very beginning of her career. Photographer Richard Corman writes, "Early in May of 1983, I got a call from my mother, Cis Corman. She was casting Scorcese's new film, The Last Temptation of Christ and said she'd just auditioned a woman I really had to photograph. 'She's an original! I've never met anyone like her!'"

"I was just beginning my career, and I was always looking for charismatic subjects, so I agreed. The woman was Madonna, and the part she'd auditioned for was the Virgin Mary. This book is a record of an encounter with Madonna and the rhythmic surge of life on New York City's Lower East Side in the early '80s. It's also an homage to the spirit of that time, a fearlessness and sense of determination that hummed throughout the scene like an engine."

"I remember watching Madonna jet across the city to a different gig every night. She was amazing, but she was also a part of a movement of creativity where the more you pushed, the more it yielded. And there were so many young artists all pushing at once."

"These photographs feel exciting and familiar to me. The energy that pulsed back then, that Madonna represents so well, is alive today with renewed vigor. Now, as then, there is such tremendous opportunity to redefine and recreate ourselves.

For me, that process begins by standing firmly in this moment, while looking back and ahead."