Gerard Malanga

Gerard Joseph Malanga is an American poet, photographer, filmmaker, curator and archivist. Malanga was born in the Bronx in 1943.

He graduated from high school with a major in Advertising Design (1960).

He enrolled at the University of Cincinnati's College of Art & Design (1960), and in the fall of 1961, Malanga was admitted to Wagner College in Staten Island.

In June 1963, he went to work for Andy Warhol as "a summer job that lasted seven years," as he likes to put it.

Gerard Malanga worked closely for Andy Warhol during Warhol's most creative period, from 1963 to 1970.

He acted in many of the early Warhol films, including Kiss (1963), Harlot (1964), Soap Opera (1964), Couch (1964), Vinyl (1965), Camp (1965), Chelsea Girls (1966); and co-produced Bufferin (1967) in which he reads his poetry, deemed to be the longest spoken-word movie on record at 33-minutes nonstop.

Malanga dropped out of Wagner College in 1964, freeing him up to work for Warhol full-time.

In 1966, he choreographed the music of the Velvet Underground for Warhol's multimedia presentation, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable.

In 1969, Malanga was one of the founding editors, along with Warhol and John Wilcock, of Interview magazine. Malanga and Warhol collaborated on the nearly five-hundred individual 3-minute "Screen Tests," by virtue of their collaboration with the motion picture medium, creating in what amounted to post-photographs, they became professional photographers. During the course of his years working with Warhol and after, Malanga shot and produced twelve films of his own. Malanga's photography spans over four decades.

Within the first six years of taking pictures he managed to create three of the most prominent portraits of post-modern photography: Charles Olson for the interview he made with Olson for The Paris Review (1969); Iggy Pop nude in the penthouse apartment they shared one summer weekend (1971); and William Burroughs in front of the corporate headquarters that bears his family name (1975). All in all, he has photographed and archived hundreds of poets and artists over the years.

In 1985 he was appointed official photo archivist for the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation.

A February 17, 1992 article in The New York Times referred to him as "Andy Warhol's most important associate. "Malanga was involved in all phases of Warhol's creative output in silkscreen painting and film making.