Clayton: Godfather of Lower East Side Documentary―A Graphic Novel

“Mr. Patterson’s world has been the downtown demimonde of squatters, anarchists, graffiti taggers, tattoo artists, junkie poets, leathered rock ’n’ rollers, and Santeria priests.”—The New York Times

For the first time ever, legendary photographer and videographer Clayton Patterson—who Anthony Bourdain described as the “archivist of all things Lower East Side”—is the subject of a biographical graphic novel anthology. Like no other, Clayton has documented the often-overlooked people and cultural contributions of New York’s Lower East Side—sometimes finding himself in perilous situations as a result.

For decades, Clayton has, as his friend Ai Weiwei puts it, “relentlessly devoted himself to a kind of culture that examines authority.” Best known for his documentation of the Tompkins Square Riots in 1988, Clayton lived at the intersection of numerous underground cultures, from drag queens to punks, gangbangers to tattoo artists, breathing in the same creative energy that gave life to Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, the Talking Heads, Blondie, and other New York icons.

In a time when the future of the city is threatened by hyper-gentrification, Clayton, whose work has documented the creative DIY underbelly of the Lower East Side, has become an icon of an increasingly vanishing New York. Now, in the tradition of Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, eighteen artists pay tribute to him in this graphic novel anthology—the first biography of this iconic artist intertwined with a rich history of the Lower East Side over the last thirty years.

With artwork from Miles Anderson, Nancy Calef, Roberto Castro, Seanne Catedral, Maegan Dolan, Esteban Erlich, Ray Felix, Max Hirnbock, Sasha Kimiatek, Jesse Lambert, Summer McClinton, Ben Moody, Natania Nunubiznez, Fabrice Sapolsky, Dov Smiley, and Chris M. Wilson.

Foreword by Eddy Portnoy