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Collection Data
- Description
- The East Village Eye was a periodical that covered art and culture in the East Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded by Leonard Abrams in 1979, the Eye published seventy-two issues until it ceased publication in 1987. The collection contains photographs and original artwork printed in the magazine, the administrative papers created by the company, editors' files, the entire run of issues of the Eye, and a set of other independent publications collected by Leonard Abrams.
- Names
- East Village Eye, Inc. (Creator)
- Abrams, Leonard, 1954- (Editor)
- Barry, Lynda, 1956- (Artist)
- Hell, Richard (Writer of added text)
- Kohlhöfer, Christof (Art copyist)
- Kupferberg, Tuli (Artist)
- Mueller, Cookie (Writer of added text)
- Wojnarowicz, David (Writer of added text)
- Dates / Origin
- Date Created: 1967 - 2017
- Library locations
- Manuscripts and Archives Division
- Shelf locator: MssCol 186237
- Topics
- Art and society -- New York (State) -- New York
- Housing
- Nightclubs -- New York (N.Y.) -- New York
- Underground press publications
- East Village (New York, N.Y.)
- East Village Eye
- Publishers
- Punk culture
- Genres
- Fliers (Ephemera)
- Newspapers
- Periodicals
- Photographs
- Notes
- Biographical/historical: The East Village Eye (often known simply as the Eye) was a periodical that covered the cultural events, politics, and news of the East Village neighborhood in New York City. Founded by Leonard Abrams in 1979, seventy-two issues of the Eye were published semi-regularly until the final issue was printed in January 1987. Abrams wrote for the magazine often, including the opening editor's notes. Each issue is imbued with Abrams' point of view through his writing and choice of columnists. The paper provided an extensive document of New York City's downtown scene during this time. Many of the artists, musicians, writers, film and theater directors, and others that made up the contributors and readers of the East Village Eye are now recognized as significant cultural figures of the 1980s. The Eye provided a glimpse of that era as it unfolded.
Leonard Abrams (1954-2023) was born in Brooklyn, and grew up in Spring Valley, New York. In high school Abrams founded and ran a local paper. Abrams returned to New York City where he studied literature at Fordham University. Eventually finding work on a paper route for the Gramercy Herald, Abrams designed an advertising supplement for the publication, and decided to create his own magazine. Abrams enrolled in a graphics and paste-up class, where he received training in magazine design. In 1979, the Eye was founded by the twenty-four year-old Abrams, incorporating artists and friends as editors and columnists.
Through a mutual friend, Abrams met Christof Kohlhöfer, an artist and member of the collective Collaborative Projects (Colab), and brought him on as the Eye's first art director. Kohlhöfer designed the magazine's early logos and layout, invited other artists to create Eye centerfolds and back pages, and persuaded Abrams to include gallery events in his listings. He also encouraged the coverage of downtown artists like David Wojnarowicz and Keith Haring.
As an editor, Abrams curated a rich mix of journalism, humor, artwork (including cartoons), literature, film, and music reviews. Regular columns included Ask Dr. Mueller by Cookie Mueller, and Slum Journal by Richard Hell. Other, more difficult-to-classify columns were a review of an abandoned 1971 Plymouth found by the author in a vacant lot and interviews with local botánica owners.
Through its letters to the editor, classifieds, advertisements, and club listings sections, The Eye offered a detailed glimpse into daily life and happenings in the East Village, and into the attitudes and interests of the magazine's readers. The Eye printed interviews with neighborhood residents discussing everyday life in the neighborhood. A regular column describing recent live performances or club scene reports often included unverifiable local gossip. Published letters to the magazine included anonymous East Villagers and downtown notables alike, including artist Coco Fusco and rock critic Lester Bangs. The Eye hosted and covered fundraising parties at major New York City dance clubs and event spaces, including ABC No Rio, The Mudd Club, Danceteria, The Paradise Garage, and The Palladium.
By the 1980s, many long-term residents and older buildings were already gone. Property values continued rising through that decade, pushing out many of the remaining community members. The Eye regularly covered housing issues and documented, in real time, the accelerating gentrification of Manhattan and the East Village in particular. Articles described instances of landlord negligence as well as vandalism and arson occurring in neighborhood tenement buildings.
Over the course of its eight-year run, the Eye chronicled major shifts in music, from the punk and post-punk scenes of the late 1970s and early 1980s, to the ascendance of hip-hop later in the 1980s. Interviews with Fab 5 Freddy and Afrika Bambaataa were printed in a January 1982 Eye issue. In his conversation with Hans Keller, Fab 5 Freddy discusses living in the East Village, his accomplishments as a rapper and graffiti artist, and his current film project Wild Style. In collaboration with fellow graffiti artists Lee Quiñones and Lady Pink, Fab 5 Freddy approached director Charlie Ahearn to create a loosely scripted depiction of the emerging hip-hop scene in the South Bronx, including the interest it generated from the Lower East Side art market. Wild Style filmed live rap performances and breakdancing, topics which Bambaata also explores in his interview with fellow artist and musician Michael Holman. In the introduction to the Afrika Bambaataa interview, Holman includes an editorial aside containing an early printed definition of hip-hop and "B-beats" to the reader. The wide-ranging talents of the four figures featured in these interviews reflect the broader collaborations between different kinds of artists, filmmakers, and musicians during this time.
The Eye featured early stories referencing the emergence of HIV/AIDS, including a 1985 report of Mayor Ed Koch shutting down several East Village bathhouses. Many contributors and subjects of the Eye would later die from the disease, including Cookie Mueller in 1989 and David Wojnarowicz in 1992, and by the mid-1980s, the periodical included a regular obituary column. Direct reports on the HIV/AIDS crisis, however, were limited.
By the middle of the decade, the Eye's coverage reflected the decline of the East Village's downtown scene amid rising real estate prices, gentrification, the rise of HIV/AIDS, and other cultural forces shaping New York City. In a 1986 issue, for example, the Eye published an obituary for the neighborhood's art scene. In the September 1986 issue, the magazine's name changed to International Eye, which an editor's note explained, reflected a shift to more global reporting. The last issue of the Eye was published in January 1987, a farewell edition highlighting some of the magazine's biggest stories. The cover image featured a photograph of musician James Chance with the first issue of the Eye rolled into a saxophone. In the last issue's editor's note, Abrams pointed to the changes in the downtown scene as a major factor for ceasing publication. However, Abrams remained committed to preserving the periodical's history and legacy in the years after it folded. In the fall of 2016, he mounted a retrospective exhibition, "The East Village Eye Show," at Howl! and published a special edition of the Eye, which also served as the show's catalogue.
After closing the Eye, Abrams converted a former school building into a club called Hotel Amazon, where he hosted a regular party with performances by New York hip-hop notables including Queen Latifah and Public Enemy. In 2008, Abrams directed and produced the documentary Quilombo Country, which examines the conditions in villages founded by communities of formerly enslaved people in Brazil.
Abrams suffered a heart attack and died in 2023.
- Content: The East Village Eye records, dating from 1967 to 2017, consist of the magazine's working files and illustrate the administrative practicalities of running an independent press. The collection reveals the cultural landscape of the East Village of New York City during the tail end of the 1970s and 1980s through its columns, reader letters, and even advertisers. The files are arranged into three series, including submissions from photographers and artists, publishing materials created by the column editors, and an assortment of independently published magazines. The publications include every issue of the East Village Eye, as well as other publications collected by Leonard Abrams. Abrams' extensive collection of other periodicals, chapbooks, newspapers, and zines provide a window to the breadth of independent publishing and book arts from the 1960s through the 2010s.
- Acquisition: Purchased from Leonard Abrams by the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library in 2022.
- Physical Description
- Extent: 39 boxes 12.96 linear feet
- Type of Resource
- Still image
- Text
- Identifiers
- NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b23256692
- MSS Unit ID: 186237
- Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 77a75630-d4f5-013c-0e92-0242ac110002
