Lary 7

Multimedia art alchemist Lary 7 was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1956, and encouraged by his mother to mine junkyards for treasure from a young age. A former media studies student of Tony Conrad, Paul Sharits, and Hollis Frampton at the city’s public university, 7 was also educated in engineering, architecture, and filmmaking. He moved to Manhattan permanently in the late 1970s, where he used his technical know-how to launch a career as a commercial art photographer, working for major galleries and downtown friends alike, and has been a fixture of New York’s experimental underground ever since. Rejecting digital technologies because of their premeditated nature, 7 uses esoteric, often precarious, analog equipment and instruments for his absurd, unpredictable presentations. In addition to his solo work, 7 has collaborated with the likes of Conrad, Tom Verlaine, Swans, Jarboe, Jutta Koether, and Foetus. In 2015, Anthology Film Archives celebrated the release of Danielle de Picciotto’s documentary Not Junk Yet: The Art Of Lary 7 with a three-day retrospective of his films. He retired from commercial photography after Hurricane Sandy and remains a tenant in the same East Village building he has lived in since the mid-’80s.