Julia Gorton “FACES - Portraits & Cut-ups from nYC 1976-2024”

Julia Gorton is a visual artist whose primary mediums are photography and collage. Her career began documenting downtown Manhattan’s prolific DIY music scene in the 1970s, photographing hundreds of bands and musicians, including Debbie Harry, Lydia Lunch, Tom Verlaine, The Screamers, The Damned, James Chance and the Contortions, and DNA, among others.

With her partner at the time, Rick Brown, she founded the zine Beat It!, combining photographs, cut-ups, DIY lettering, and patterned backgrounds to create a visual aesthetic that helped define Punk, Post-Punk, and No-Wave, one that continues to be emulated today.

Her work has appeared on seminal album covers and been exhibited internationally at KATA Gallery in Tokyo, Doomed Gallery in London, and major New York institutions including the International Center of Photography, the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2024, she presented this extensive body of work at Selva.

Throughout the decades, Gorton has maintained her fascination with photographing people. With an empathetic and curious eye, she creates glamorous portraits of fascinating individuals and strangers who visit her Open Studio Portrait Series, building relationships through photography.

The exhibition surveyed her work across decades, featuring original Beat It! pages, recent Open Studio portraits, collages from the Pretty in Punk and Post Pink series, seminal photographs of late-1970s bands, and period ephemera.

As part of her residency, Julia spent four days at Selva with the Open Studio Portrait Series, documenting enthusiasts and visitors.

Curated by Lucas Cabu