ABOUT MARC MILLER, BETTIE RINGMA AND AND THE "AMSTERDAM POLAROIDS"

"Today in Amsterdam there are people everywhere walking around with Polaroid cameras trying to convince tourists to pose for a picture that they will then try to sell back to them as a keepsake from their vacation. But back in the late 1970s, artists Marc H. Miller and Bettie Ringma were the first people in the city to go from bar to bar selling Polaroid portraits.

The two moved from New York to the Netherlands in 1979, and started selling Polaroids at 6 guilders a pop to make some extra cash. In the process, they captured all the different faces and places that made up Amsterdam nightlife back then—from the Red Light District's rough sailor bars and Turkish cafes, to the trans club Madame Arthur and the Whiskey A Go-Go near the Leidseplein. Their pictures offer a unique glimpse into a time when moustaches were full, sex was a plenty, and rambunctious drunks cheerily flashed their bits in the pub." Vice

Marc Miller is a well known "Punk Curator", living in New York, running the amazing www.98bowery.com website, which is dedicated to (underground) art from the 70s and 80s. Oscar van Gelderen wrote a profile: Marc H. Miller: Punk Curator. On eighties art, Fashion Moda & the Bowery, you can read it here. 

Marc Miller interviews Jean Michel Basquiat in the Fun Gallery, New York, 1982

Bettie Ringma is a Dutch artist. She moved to New York in 1976. Next to the infamous 'Amsterdam Polaroids', on which she collaborated with Miller, she is also the star of another series: Bettie & CBGB, on which she posed with all the underground stars of that moment: Patty Smith, Talking Heads, The Ramones etc

There has been some amazing press already, regarding the polaroids. Here's a brief summary:

2015 Vice (Lisette van Eijk): 1980s Polaroids of the Drunks and Weirdos in Amsterdam's Red Light District

2015 The Guardian (Karthryn Bromwich): Every night there was a different group at CBGB - it became like a second home

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