Paula Gately Tillman
Hope Nicholls on the Set of The American Music Show, Atlanta
1991
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Paula Gately Tillman
Hope Nicholls on the Set of The American Music Show, Atlanta
1991
Physical Qualities
Gelatin silver print, Sheet: 356 x 279 mm. (14 x 11 in.)
Image: 241 x 165 mm. (9 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.)
Credit Line
Alice and Franklin Cooley Fund
Object Number
2015.88
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Paula Gately Tillman photographed an eclectic array of personalities on the Atlanta and New York alternative scenes. Hope Nicholls (the front woman for Fetchin Bones) and Jayne County (the ground-breaking transgendered lead singer of Wayne County and the Electric Chairs) were punk rock pioneers. County was also an actor in Andy Warhol’s 1971 theatrical production Pork. Back-up singers for the band Blondie, sisters Tish and Snooky Bellomo established Manic Panic, the first New York punk boutique, in 1977. Gately Tillman had an early introduction to RuPaul through her friend Dick Richards, co-founder of the Atlanta-based Funtone Records label and one of the creators of the public access television program The American Music Show. She made several portraits of RuPaul, capturing his rise from an underground figure to full-fledged celebrity between 1986 and 1992. Even when focusing her lens on an unidentified performer at New York’s Wigstock drag festival, Gately Tillman captured the spirit of unbridled creativity that characterized this unique time in music, performance, and fashion—a period that was influenced by Warhol and overlapped with the last years of his life.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase, 2015; the artist
