Joe Maloney is a photographer who was a pioneer of color photography in the late 1970s and a member of the now-legendary LIGHT gallery in New York. He is known for his vivid and sometimes surreal use of color, his unique large format landscapes depicting his native northern New Jersey suburbs, and his evocative pictures from the waning days of Asbury Park on the New Jersey shore. During the 1980s, he largely stepped away from the art world, raising a family in upstate New York and becoming a contractor and furniture maker. However, he never completely left photography behind, and now over the last couple of years he’s spent an increasing amount of time diving through his voluminous archives and sharing his work to an entirely new audience through Instagram.
Palace Amusement, Asbury Park, New Jersey (1980)
I first heard about Joe through Jeff Mermelstein, who mentioned Joe during a podcast interview, explaining that Joe taught color printing at the International Center of Photography when Mermelstein was a young photographer doing an internship there in the late 70s. He talked about Joe’s 4x5 color landscapes from suburban New Jersey; having also grown up in the New Jersey suburbs, I was intrigued, although at that time very little of his work was online. I subsequently met his son Mike Maloney, a very talented photographer in his own right, and eventually got to know Joe as he began to share his work on Instagram.
I had a great time talking to Joe about rubbing shoulders with Ansel Adams and Julian Schnabel, driving around the New Jersey backroads at night, leaving the art scene to live “alone at the end of a dirt road,” and discovering a new audience for his work through Instagram.
Sebastian: Thanks again for doing this. You were one of the first people I thought of who I wanted to interview. Even with Instagram and everything, a lot of people still don't know too much about you or your work.
Joe: Well, I've always been pretty low key about self-promotion. Like, psychological low self-esteem. Anybody who likes my pictures – I immediately take a dim view of them, because there must be something wrong with them. Or that one, you know? Why that one? That kind of thing. It’s really worked well – I’ve become basically invisible.
S: I can very much relate to not being into self-promotion.
J: Michael is the one that dragged me on Instagram, too. I didn't even know what it was or anything. Anyway, here we are, so…
S: Very good.
J: The Westwood connection is really funny between me and you. I mean, that's where I really got started with color. Do you remember the movie theater in town there? The Pascack movie theater or something?
S: Yeah, of course.
J: Well, in a little corner of that place was this photo lab. And I forgot why I went in there or what happened that I needed something done. And I met the guy who was running it, a young guy. And he was very much into photography, and color photography, and basically gave me the run of the place. He said, if you go around Westwood and take a picture – this is like 1976, I guess – if you could just go around and take pictures in Westwood, I'll print everything and we'll have a show. And I have a little gallery in here. I was going to Ramapo College at the time, so some of my other classmates came down and did stuff there. So we’d have little shows, selling prints for, like, $25, in plastic bags. 11x14 black and white prints and stuff like that. I think I still have some with the price tag on them.
S: So is that how you started doing color, because it was available to you there?
J: Pretty much. I'm probably skipping a few little steps here and there. But I also got the internship at LIGHT Gallery at that time, when they were at 1018 Madison. So, I was living at my parents’ house. I was drafted into the army during the Vietnam War draft. I had gotten out, and I was going to school on the GI bill. I got interested in photography in the Army and did some darkroom stuff, but I basically didn't know anything about art world photography until I got to Ramapo College. And then I started taking art class, and I had one teacher who even had a show at LIGHT Gallery at one time, Dave Freund. And he got us the internship. And I wound up working there – I’d drive in my van and park on the street. Go to the post office, mail stuff. And I met like, everybody, basically. And they moved down to 724 Fifth Avenue. That's when Maude Schuyler [Clay] started working there. So I knew her for a long time down there. So, yeah, it was crazy times.
S: And LIGHT, I mean, it seems like it was the only game in town as far as a gallery toward the kind of art photography which…
Judy Dater, Imogen and Twinka at Yosemite (1974)
J: Well Witkin Gallery, was… I just dug out a picture, a color Xerox. It was signed by Lee Witkin, Witkin Gallery. And it was a picture of me and Judy Dater. Do you know Judy Dater?
S: No, I don’t.
J: Oh, okay. She did these pictures of Imogen Cunningham and Twinka. And she used to show there at Witkin. And Witkin was more of like an old school salon kind of place. They had couches and lamps and stuff, and pictures hanging on the wall, like in a salon style. But they had a really nice book department and one of my closest friends from college worked there in the gallery, you know, matting prints and doing all that stuff. So I used to go over there a lot, and I would wind up – when I went to work for Pace – I would build crates for them, because I had all kinds of equipment. And they would give me books in return. So I traded crates for books. And I wasn't paying for the wood! Pace could afford it. Anyway, LIGHT wound up representing me. I was in a summer show, and then I was in a show with Benno Friedman, and I sold a lot of prints. But they were cheap then.
S: I've read a little bit about LIGHT gallery and the people that were there. Did it feel like a scene? Like were people interacting and learning from each other, or was it more you were just kind of doing your own thing and it happened to be…
J: No, it was a it was a real scene. I mean, the openings could get crazy at times. There's a thing called the Society for Photo Education, SPE or something, that used have these conferences. So, you’d get all these photo groupie types coming to the openings, and there was a lot of alcohol and… I mean, it was great. It was fun. And you know, God… I was a young guy back then. I forgot when I left LIGHT gallery to go to Pace to work. But I remember they had a big Ansel Adams show. He put out the last call for prints or something. So they had a big show of his, and he came. And they had a private dining room at the World Trade Center, and we all went up there. Well, I didn't think I was going to go because I was a lowly kind of… I worked in the back room and stuff. But they invited me to go. And, you know, it’s Windows On The World, man. And Ansel Adams, no less. So on the menu they have lamb. And I'm like, “oh, God, lamb.” You know, my mother used to… we lived in Paramus, New Jersey. But she only bought lamb that died of old age. She didn't know about baby lambs and things like that. So I thought lamb was really awful, but that was my first introduction to really good lamb.
S: With Ansel Adams at Windows On The World!
J: Yeah, exactly.
Mickeys and WTC, Warren Street (1981)
S: Let's go back a little bit. You were born in Massachusetts, right? And then you grew up in in New Jersey.
J: Yeah, but I didn't live in Massachusetts long. When I was first born, my father was a Chesterfield cigarette salesman or something like that. And then he got in the FBI, somehow. So we moved around. We moved to Saint Louis, Atlanta, and then to New York. But we lived in Paramus for a long time, and that's pretty much where I grew up, in Paramus.
S: And that’s when you went to high school.
J: Yeah. And Paramus was cool. It was not cool, actually. Totally uncool, because it was all farming land until they decided to put in subdivisions and shopping malls. So we had no main street, like Westwood had a main street, right?
S: Or Ridgewood. My mom lives in Westwood now, but I grew up in Ridgewood.
J: Fucking Ridgewood was arch enemies, man! Because we were the farmers and they had the Heights and all that kind of shit.
S: Yeah, sure.
J: It was that typical American Graffiti kind of mentality… cruising. We had no main street. We had to cruise up and down Route 17. And that's how I wound up at Marty The Tire King and all those places that I took pictures of, because that was my main street.
Rayco, Paramus, NJ (1979)
S: I grew up with that, too. Although we weren't really cruising anymore, by that time. But we would still go to the diners late at night… Suburban Diner or whatever. I remember going there all the time on Friday and Saturday when I was in high school. But anyway, you were saying you initially got into photography when you were in the army?
J: Yeah. I just liked the idea of cameras, and tinkering, and hands on kind of stuff. And I always wanted to be able to make my own prints. I always wanted to do this, I wanted to do that. I wanted to do all of it. And I've been that way my whole life. Alright, you want to build a house? Well then, build a house. You know, learn how to frame, and learn how to do plumbing. So I've been distracted my whole life by trying to do everything myself. I mean, I did dye transfers in our loft in New York. It was crazy. The thing that really threw me, though, was when the C-prints just didn't stand up to the test of time, and it like really pissed me off.
S: Because you spent a ton of effort on them, right?
J: Yeah. And I mean, they sent a lot of prints all over the world. And just to think about how awful they looked. Sometimes I'll walk in someplace and see one where I go, “Oh my God. How embarrassing.” Or one will pop up online somewhere. I'm like, “ugh.” It’s making me cringe.
S: When do you think you noticed that they were…
J: Oh, I don't know. I don't remember. It was a few years. It was definitely a flawed process. And then Eggleston, of course, is doing dye transfer prints. That's pretty cool. He was the best, you know.
S: I'm also interested – because it was that time when color photography was just kind of entering the art world – what was the reason that you got so heavily into it? Was it just because you had the access to the lab and you could do it?
Julian Schnabel by Joe Maloney, 1984
J: Well, that was partially it. And a lot of my life has been, I just fall into a circumstance – through no fault of my own – and I just go with it, you know? It was partially that. It was partially that you're graduating from college, you're living in your parents' house. It's time for a change, whatever it was. And time to move into the city, time to stop doing black and white. You're getting tired of 35 mm, 11x14 prints. So, buy a view camera, and shake things up. I mean, you meet Stephen Shore, and you meet Neal Slavin – all very different characters. And you know, I'm still wearing clothes my mother buys me. Like, walking around in New York City, going to the fucking Mudd Club, looking like a fucking hick from Paramus New Jersey, right? And it, in fact, was true. So it was a total learning experience, socially… and it’s like, “Oh, why don’t you come up to the Hamptons this weekend?” Okay, well… where are the Hamptons exactly? You know, my God… And you realize these people have money. And walk-in refrigerators. And BMWs and shit like that. And I'm driving around in a Pinto at that time. And I was wide eyed and bushy tailed, like… “Oh, this is interesting.” But I was as much a novelty to them as they were to me. And then I just sort of followed my nose. And now I’m living alone at the end of a dirt road. It was an adventure, I must say. It was kind of a break with my past. My mother wanted me to work for the phone company, you know? And get a job that would have a retirement and that kind of stuff. And have somewhere to go every day, that kind of thing. So they had no idea where I was or what I was doing. I'm living in lofts down in Tribeca before there was even… it’d be deserted on weekends, there’d be nobody there. You could do anything you want. So it was fun. And photography-wise, at Ramapo College I learned about Walker Evans, and I learned about the WPA. And then I learned about Abstract Expressionism, and I learned about all kinds of things. And then at Pace I started meeting artists – Brice Marden, Louise Nevelson, Jim Dine. So that was a whole different aspect to things. A different way of doing things. And I would go to their studios and photograph people, and it was fun. It felt like you were in the thick of it. I hate to use that word, but there was a lot of energy in the air. And then Arne Glimcher called me up and said, “I want you to fly out to Bridgehampton this weekend.” I'm like, “fly out to Bridgehampton?” I didn’t know you could do that. I'll just put my camera in the car and drive out there, and just give me Julian Schnabel’s address. I'll go hang out with him for the day and take some pictures. Fly out to East Hampton… I mean, c’mon. Apparently everybody does that, because the traffic sucks. But I didn't know that, you know? It was crazy. I wish I had done more, actually.
Route 17, Maywood, NJ (1979)
S: But I'm curious, though. Because you moved to the city, and all these new avenues are opening… and yet the photos that you're the most known for are back at home, in Paramus. So how did how did that happen? I know you have photos from the city too. But what drew you – even though you were living in the city – to want to photograph home, and small-town New Jersey?
J: I think a lot of it was that I found it difficult to photograph in New York City. Although I did, when I lived downtown. I could go out in the West Side highway and do stuff. But it felt like you were photographing the bottom of buildings all the time. There was no expanse or open space. But probably those ’78-‘79 Route 17 pictures were me coming home from the city at 11 o'clock at night. Either I might have taken the bus back to the Vince Lombardi Park & Ride and picked up my one of my vehicles, and driven home and then stopped to take pictures along the way. Who knows? I don't know. But I might have been commuting, and commuting at night, mostly. But it was also familiar landscape to me. It was certainly not alien. Pizza Town and all that kind of stuff was my stomping grounds. It was like my main street. And then the whole Bruce Springsteen, Asbury Park… I felt very simpatico with that kind of mentality, the songs and all that kind of stuff.
Casino, Asbury Park, New Jersey (1980)
S: And you were basically the only person photographing there. And now those photos… that world is gone.
J: I went down to Asbury Park last summer with Michael, actually.
S: He told me, yeah.
J: My friend from high school rented a house near there, and I was like, “Holy shit, this is totally fucking different.” And they want to do something with me down there. They don't know what, but they want to do billboard-sized pictures of some of those Asbury Park things, or on the sides of buildings. I don't know. I guess we'll get around to it eventually, when we get a vaccine or something.
S: But even in northern New Jersey, the suburbs. There was nobody else photographing Paramus, you know?
J: I was photographing trees between the north and southbound lanes of the parkway and stuff like that. Who was doing that? I don't know.
S: Right.
J: I cornered the market on that kind of stuff, and I think I still have it. But it’s probably not so great.
Westwood, NJ (1977)
S: I like your work for many reasons, obviously. But part of it is having grown up there. I was born in ’83, so a little bit later than some of your pictures. And obviously, by the time I was growing up, things had changed a lot. But I remember when you posted the photograph of the mural on the… what was it?
J: Alexander’s.
Alexander’s, Route 4 (1976)
S: Yeah! When I saw it, I remembered it so clearly. But I thought, “Wow, I haven’t had a thought about that in 35 years,” you know?
J: Why would you?
S: But it's back there, you know?
J: That was maybe ‘77 or ’76, or whatever it was. I’m out looking for pictures. And I'm like, okay, well, the yellow lines are a little blurry on the ground, and the sign is crooked. I'm gonna try to make a picture out of this. I took a bunch of different pictures from different views. And I didn't give a thought about it. I mean, so many of the pictures, especially recently – those station wagons at night, and parking lots and stuff – I never, ever considered even printing those pictures. And, it might have been because it was a shitty contact print. So I didn't give it a second thought. When you're doing four on a on a page, I just want to get a positive image. I don't necessarily need it to be perfect or anything. And exposures can be so wildly different that one may look really good, and the others look like they're really underexposed or something like that. But I started going through them more critically. There would also be light leaks, and there would be hairs in the sky, because I'm loading film in a changing bag. So you could easily eliminate a picture. But then with the drum scanner that I had for a while — which somebody gave me, actually — I thought I had scanned everything I wanted to do. And then I bought a flatbed scanner, and I have a lot more time now than I used to, so I would go through stuff. And in Photoshop you can perk something up a lot better than you could with a C-print. Let's put it that way. And even dye transfer… I was certainly no expert dye transfer printer, but you're limited to what you can do. With Photoshop, you can drag a lot of information out of a picture. And it may take a while to do it, or it may take a few different tries, but some of them I just think are really good. Like, why didn’t I ever print that? And I mean, I had basically given up on all of this shit, and was building houses up here. I hired a guy to do some tile work for me, and I had known him before, and he's from the city, and he had a printer. He wanted me to come over, and he was going to show me the Photoshop stuff. This is quite a few years ago. And I thought he knew a lot, but it turns out he didn't know very much. And I'm a quick study when it comes to technical things. I really got into it. And the inkjet prints were just so sexy to me on the right paper. I really got back into it immediately. I haven't been taking pictures that much anymore, but I'm enamored of the cell phone thing… how easy it is. But I'll never go back to shooting film, I don't think, because it's just crazy. But I have a lot of film here. I’ve got a refrigerator full of negatives.
S: What you just said reminded me of a couple things. One is just talking a little bit more about how you drifted away from photography. At some point, were you just kind of done with it? Or was it more gradual – your life changed, you moved, you had kids, and it kind of faded out?
Camp Maloney, 1986
J: Well, it was all that stuff. I was living on Warren Street. And LIGHT Gallery sort of disintegrated, or self-destructed. And I knew Peter MacGill from LIGHT Gallery. And I was living at one time with Victor Schrager, who was also a director there. Then we wound up living in the same building together, and I got married, and he got married. And Peter and Victor published that dye transfer portfolio of mine. QED Editions. But then Peter wound up doing the thing with Pace/MacGill. And in the meantime, I bounced around. And I just kind of generally lost interest. It was mostly because of the C-print thing. I couldn’t justify making a C-print and selling it to somebody knowing it's not gonna last. I mean, it may have been naive of me to think they would. So I set up a dye transfer lab and my own thing, and then I sort of got off on a tangent with multiple image things. Because now I was being influenced by printmaking processes, like Jim Dine and all that kind of stuff. And when I did the portfolio out in Chicago, the dye portfolio with these two guys, I was fascinated by the rolling out of the mattes and all that stuff. It felt like you were doing something, instead of watching something come out of a machine. So I fell in love with the process, and I set myself up to do that. And then kids started coming along. And then I'm thinking, “Oh, we have to have a nanny.” And then we bought this place up here, and we spent more and more time up here. Finally, I just said, “I gotta get the fuck out of here [NYC]. I can't stand it anymore.” And I was not interested in commercial work, really. it was almost like when I decided to start shooting color instead of black and white. It was like, it's time for a big change… and let's do it now. We moved up here, and I brought my refrigerator and all my stuff, but I couldn't have a darkroom because of the septic system. I still took pictures, but I'd have to send them to New York to have them processed. And I don't know… I just sort of drifted away from it. I was doing more pictures of the kids, and doing videos of Michael playing baseball, or Caroline, you know? And I was still doing it, but it was not the same kind of artsy way of doing it. I don't know, it just sort of drifted away from me. I still see pictures, and I still took pictures, but I got away from the art world thing. I got really disillusioned with the whole thing. Even at Pace/McGill. Like, how am I going to compete with Chuck Close, or Lucas Samaras? It's like… eh.
S: Yeah, that makes sense.
J: You know, back in the day, LIGHT Gallery, it was like a boutique-y, photographers helping photographers. It wasn't about, like… oh shit, now you’ve got your worst nightmare: actually, photography is an art. Now you're gonna have to compete with artists. And I’m like, “God.” I was not ready. I was just a guy wearing a sweater his mother bought him, and walking around on Route 17 taking pictures at night. I was not like an intellectual something-or-other. And it was not my personality to be banging my own drum. I find that like a used car salesman. I’d rather have my dealer do that, and I'm just going to go live in the woods by myself, and let me know when you need a print.
S: Right.
J: I don't want to have to. And apparently, they think you're supposed to be doing all kinds of promotion, too. And I'm thinking… then why do you get 50%?
S: Yeah, sure.
J: Fuck you! Earn your fucking money.
S: Yeah, it’s interesting. I was just listening to a podcast with this photographer Robert Lyons. And he talked about how somebody had bought a large print of his, and he agreed to go help the dealer install it in their house. And the whole conversation there was about which piece of furniture it matched, and should go over the couch, and the color. And he was like, “Oh my God, this is not why I made this picture.” To match with the sofa or whatever.
J: It's like watching sausage get made. You don't wanna know. I mean, my wife was a dealer, too, so she had to deal with all that kind of stuff. But I don't want to know. I want to be insulated from all that stuff.
S: And just make the work…
J: And send me a check! Rick Wester has me on Artsy. But I don't know. Any work of mine that sells, sells itself. It's not because anybody's doing it. So it's kind of weird when you're paying somebody.
Gulf (1978)
S: How did the Instagram thing happen?
J: Well… Michael. He said, “You should be on Instagram.” And I said, “What’s Instagram?” And he said, “Well, people know who you are, because they ask me if I'm related to you.” And you are, apparently. And I don't necessarily want credit for that, but, yeah, let's go.
S: It’s funny, one of those people might have been me. At some point I listened to an interview with Jeff Mermelstein, who you taught at some point at ICP, right?
J: Oh yeah. I didn't even know that I did that, so…
S: Right, I mean… he was basically just a kid at that point. But anyway, he mentioned you in a podcast interview. He was talking about being at ICP, and he said, “Oh, Joe Maloney, who took these beautiful color suburban landscapes in New Jersey.” And I thought, interesting… suburban pictures in New Jersey? And I looked you up and saw the Asbury Park stuff. So when I met Mike, he said, “Oh, my father’s a photographer, Joe Maloney.” And I was like, “Joe Maloney – I know who that is!”
J: That’s funny. Well, he said, “Look, you don't have to do anything.” Basically, this is back when I had drum scanned all the stuff I thought was worth doing. So, I'd make a .jpeg. And I'm always learning something about Photoshop. I'm always tweaking or doing something. I started feeding him pictures and he would post them. And he created the whole account. And then he was in London on business at some point, and broke his phone or something. So I wound up starting to post my own pictures. And I was getting into it by that time, because I'm easily addicted to, God knows… anything. So I've kind of gotten into it. I drift away a little bit here and there. But I'm still digging through stuff. And I have people that say, “You’ve got so much stuff here,” and I just don't believe anybody. But then I find something and I go, “Wow,” and then it's like 900 likes or something.
Tice Farms (1978)
S: Yeah, that's great. Is there a picture, or a set of pictures, that you're the most proud of? Or if someone hadn't heard of you, and wanted to find out what Joe Maloney is about?
J: Oh, I don't know. That's the kind of stuff that I leave up to other people.
S: So I have The New Color Photography book by Sally Euclare here. And you know, there's the section on you, with a little bio. It seems like you were particularly known for sort of deliberately wild colors that didn’t necessarily accurately represent what was in the scene. And it talks about you using tungsten-balanced film in daylight. How did that come about? Was that just from experimenting with the materials? Or was there some kind of theory behind it?
J: No, I did a lot of experimentation with that stuff. And there was a type S film, which is a daylight film. And it had a particular curve to it, like a densitometer kind of thing. Basically, that film was made to be used with a flash. It was made for wedding photographers. So what am I doing, shooting at f/45? And I found it too contrasty in actual daylight. You know, I just found it harsh. And I wanted a long exposure. I wanted that whole sort of f/64 fantasy land kind of thing. I even had a densitometer at one time, if you can believe it. And I did all kinds of scientific-y, or pseudoscience experiments. But I wound up using Vericolor type L, which is long exposure meant for tungsten. And in daylight, I put an 85B filter on, which would convert it to daylight. But it would slow it down a lot because it was a very dense filter. So I got these pretty long exposures during daylight. And then at night, I would just take the filter off, and then I get that really blue sky from the tungsten, and it would render the mixed light sources in an interesting way. I found that and I just stuck with it. I was obsessed with reciprocity. And you know, the whole thing with negative film is like… if you think you've made the right exposure, think again. Just double it. And you're not gonna fuck it up, you know. It wants to be overexposed.
S: Exactly.
Pearl River, NY (1978)
J: But with slide film you gotta be right there… or underexpose it, so everything looks sexy.
S: I've always found that interesting too. Because film has gotten so popular in the last few years – and I shoot film – but I think that a lot of the way people use it now, it's to sort of get a gritty look. They want grain, and they want it to look gnarly. But I always look at photos like yours or other film photos from the past. Obviously, film was the only thing around. And that craft of actually exposing an image well and making it look really good, I feel like it's gone. But I always strive to get images that are really clean on film.
J: I mean, back in the old days, even like when I was photographing art, people would come in there and say, “push this two F stops” or whatever. What do you mean, leave it in there longer or something? I don't even know what that means. It’s like, expose the thing properly and be done with it. And if it's a long exposure, it’s fine if it's a little blurry. I like that. I would take my negatives to somebody to print, some 8x10s – I couldn't make an enlargement from an 8x10 so I would give it to somebody. And I gave them these 8x10s, and they actually told me, “It's really nice to get some well exposed negatives for change,” which was quite a compliment coming from a lab, you know. But if you're shooting something and you’re not underexposed or overexposed, it's a big deal.
S: Yeah. I think someone like you, you took the time to really work it out. Now because of digital, everything’s so easy. So most people when they're using film, they just don’t make the effort..
Ansel Adams, Moonrise Over Hernandez (1941)
J: It’s too easy. Like now anybody can take a fucking cell phone and make Moonrise Over Hernandez. And in the phone you can edit it and change it… it’s insane.
S: Yeah, but it still takes effort. I mean, you’ve got to know what you want.
J: Oh, it's fun. It’s so effortless. Believe me, after what I went through with dye transfers, and making separation negatives and masks and stuff like that. My freezer is full of failed experiments. But I enjoyed the technical challenge of it all. And when I got away from it and got back, and sort of got a handle on Photoshop and the drum scanner, I just felt being drawn back into that technical wizardry. And knowing I had a whole refrigerator full of 4x5 and 8x10 negatives… it was cool. And I'd learn, I'd do it, and think, “this could be better.” And I’d do it again, and I’d do it again, and I’d try different things and settle in on something, and it worked. I'm pretty happy with the way they look these days.
S: Even on that little phone screen. They jump out for sure.
J: I edit on my computer and I pump it out to my phone. Which… I've only had a cell phone for two years now. I waited till they perfected it. That's what my father used to say when we had a black and white TV, and he said, “I'll get a color TV when they perfect it.” And it never actually happened. But I don't know, it's fun. And it's fun to get some attention. And I sell some prints on Artsy once in a while. I can send a negative off to a printer, and if he has any idea what he's doing, you just basically press a button, and it'll come out looking like it's supposed to. And they can ship it off to wherever. Trey Anastasio… do you know who he is? The Phish guy?
S: Sure, yeah.
J: He bought one of my Asbury Park pictures. He wanted it as big as we could make it. And we made it, I don’t know, 5 feet by 7 feet.
S: Do you remember which one it was?
J: Yeah, it was the woman… you know the woman on the carousel, reaching for the brass ring? That, and he was really interested in the one girl and two guys leaning up against that car. He wanted one of those.
Reaching (1980)
Asbury Rockers (1980)
S: Do you have any other plans besides the website? Is there going to be a Joe Maloney book at some point?
J: I don't know. People have said something about that, but I don't know. I don't know how to do that. I know it's a lot easier now than it used to be, but I'd have to leave that up to my son or something. I don't even know how to edit. How would I edit a book like that?
S: Well I definitely think there should be one. Anyway, Joe, this was great.
J: Well, it was not too painful. Thank you. Thank you for being gentle with me.
S: Oh, sure. I didn't have to do anything. And honestly a lot of this was just for me, selfishly – I’ve been wanting to just get to talk to you myself. So thanks a lot!
J: Thank you.
You can see more of Joe Maloney’s work at his brand new website and his Instagram.
Text Copyright © Sebastian Siadecki, 2020.
All images Copyright © Joe Maloney, except as indicated.