Images of New York: ‘West Side Story’ and Garry Winogrand’s ‘Central Park Zoo’

Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen

PRX

Arts

4.6 • 675 Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2020

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Six decades after it premiered on Broadway, “West Side Story” is everywhere again, with a revival on Broadway and a movie in the works. But many still are troubled by the way Puerto Ricans are depicted. Plus, the story behind Garry Winogrand’s 1967 photo, "Central Park Zoo," which featured a white woman and a black man holding chimpanzees dressed in human clothes, and is one of his most widely exhibited — and controversial — images.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	from PRX.
0:05.7	Today on Studio 360, two New York icons.
0:11.3	First, West Side Story actually started something.
0:15.3	West Side Story changed the rules about musicals having to be upbeat.
0:19.7	It gave permission for things like cabaret and then things like company and follies,
0:24.7	and then things like Fun Home and Dear Evan Hanson.
0:28.3	How West Side Story was made and why it keeps getting remade.
0:33.2	Plus, one of Gary Winnegrant's most famous photographs
0:37.8	is also one of his most controversial.
0:40.4	It forces the viewer to confront their feelings about race,
0:45.2	their feelings about what happens if a white woman in a black man get together.
0:49.8	The making of a photograph called Central Park Zoo
0:52.2	and the man who helped define street photography.
0:56.3	Those are ahead on Studio 360 right after this.
0:59.1	This is Studio 360.
1:10.1	I'm Kurt Wiennes. And I'm sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
1:13.2	This first level of garden. This is Thomas Jefferson's vegetable garden. I like to have the roasted chicken base.
1:18.2	Very well done. Editing is all about timing. I try to get a little bit away from the actual subject.
1:23.6	You must get sick of your own voice, right? Studio 360.
1:29.0	With Kurt Anderson.
1:39.3	Our new Studio 360 series New York icons is about works of art that were made in New York City, but of shape lives everywhere.
1:47.0	And today, we're looking at two works, not just made here in our home city, but where New York is also the backdrop.
	...

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