Leee Black Childers (July 24, 1945 – April 6, 2014) was an American photographer, writer and rock music manager, who "recorded the legacy of a theatrical cross over between rock music and gay culture."[1] Born Lee Black Childers in Jefferson County, Kentucky[2] he started to spell his name with three rather than two "e"s as a child.[3]
Biography
Leee Black Childers was born on July 24, 1945, in or near Louisville, Kentucky, to Ova Childers, a railroad switchman, and Harriet Black, who later went by Kathlyn Black Stone. He had two brothers, Larry and Henry.[3] He attended Kentucky Southern College[3] before moving to San Francisco, California, and later, in 1968, to New York City where he witnessed the Stonewall Riots.[4][5]
He began taking photographs of drag queens and was encouraged by Andy Warhol to work as a photographer, gaining a reputation for his portraits of the artists, musicians, and others who passed through the Factory in New York.[3] Childers photographed the nightlife and later the punk scene of New York City. [6] When he was 24 years old, he moved from Kentucky to San Francisco.
In the early 1970s, Childers was a stage manager and photographer for Warhol's only stage production Pork, directed by Tony Ingrassia at the Roundhouse in London.[1] His photographs from the production were part of the exhibit, "Warhol Live: Music and Dance in Warhol's Work," at the Andy Warhol Museum in 2009. Childers was also the stage manager for Jackie Curtis’s play “Femme Fatale” in 1970.[7] He was an assistant to Warhol at the Factory between 1982 and 1984, and took photographs of visiting celebrities, counter-cultural figures and musicians, particularly of punk rock and new wave music stars, such as Ruby Lynn Reyner, Debbie Harry, Jayne County, and the Sex Pistols. He worked as a tour manager for David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Johnny Thunders, and Mott the Hoople, among others.[8]David Bowie was a fan of Andy Warhol's work, and because of that he hired several of the people that were involved in the production of Pork, which included: Leee Black Childers, Cherry Vanilla, and Tony Zanetta.[9] In his time with David Bowie, Childers became his official tour photographer for Ziggy Stardust.[10] Leee Black Childers's relationship with Bowie got him a job at his record management company MainMan.[11]
In 2012, he published Drag Queens, Rent Boys, Pick Pockets, Junkies, Rockstars and Punks, a collection of some of his photographs and their backgrounds, which was the subject of exhibitions in London in 2011[12][13] and Los Angeles, California, in March 2014.[8] Childers's photographs of the punk scene are known worldwide.
Childers died in Los Angeles on April 6, 2014, at the age of 68, from undisclosed causes.[1] At the time of his death, he lived in Brooklyn, New York.[3]
