RIP: Leee Black Childers

“I opened up LIFE magazine and there was an article about Timothy Leary and LSD and I thought this seems fun. So I just got in a car and went to San Francisco for the Summer of Love.” —Lee Black Childers

If you followed Bowie, Lou Reed and the glam and punk scenes through CREEM magazine, you no doubt have heard of Leee Black Childers, who died last week at 68, in Los Angeles. At Warhol’s Factory, Childers “told Warhol that he aspired to be a photographer; in that case, Warhol told him, he should just call himself one.

“He said, ‘Say you’re a photographer, and you’re a photographer. And he pointed across the Factory to Candy Darling, who was one of the great drag queens, and he said: ‘Look at her. She says she’s a woman. She is.’ So from that moment on, I was a photographer.”

Childers would fall in with the Warhol crowd and the darker side of New York City in the Seventies. He photographed Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Deborah Harry, Patti Smith and, of course, the drag queens and junkies that populated that scene. He would also manage the careers of Bowie and Iggy, with MainMan, for a short period of time.

In 2012, he published “Drag Queens, Rent Boys, Pick Pockets, Junkies, Rockstars and Punks,” a collection of his photographs and the stories behind them.

Some of Mr. Childers work can be seen here, and there is an excellent interview with Childers on The Vinyl Factory that can be seen here.