Portfolio: Agosto Machado
Agosto Machado’s archive of downtown New York—featuring Candy Darling’s shoes and Peter Hujar’s photographs—introduced by Alex Jovanovich.
By Alex Jovanovich, Agosto Machado published in Artforum September 2025 Issue
A PHOTO OF MACHADO BY PETER HUJAR
“Peter didn’t like this photo of me, but it’s my favorite. It’s the best portrait he ever took of me (although I think I’m showing too much breast here). I just love the attitude, the cast shadow, the mood. It’s not very close-up—the distance makes me look a little more glamorous. I thrifted the outfit and wore it in productions for Ethyl Eichelberger.”
…
SOME HEARTS MIRACULOUSLY ENDURE. Agosto Machado—artist, activist, thespian, muse, historian, raconteur, and perennial fashion plate—is one of them.
Machado grew up an orphan in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood and spent much of his youth without a roof over his head and nary a dollar to his name. He and his fellow “street queens,” as they described themselves, sought one another out for comradeship and survival. In the late 1950s, he felt the pull of Greenwich Village, where bohemianism and unabashed queerness offered a refuge from the oppressiveness of straight life. A little later on, he became a linchpin of the downtown theater scene, working with and acting for some of off-off-off-Broadway’s crème de la crème, including playwright and Warholette Jackie Curtis, artist and filmmaker Jack Smith, Ellen Stewart of the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, dramatist and drag doyenne Ethyl Eichelberger, and John Vaccaro’s Playhouse of the Ridiculous…
… In the following pages, you will encounter only a tiny cross section of Machado’s enormous trove, which might be one of the most astonishing and eclectic portraits of an era (or eras) ever rendered. The centerpiece of this portfolio, Untitled (Snapshots), 2022, is a memorial work comprising pictures Machado took of his friends and fellow travelers throughout the years, and includes a list naming all those depicted, some of whom have been individually highlighted here with Machado’s stories about them. You also will be able to gaze upon a selection of objects from the artist’s cache, to a few of which have been appended Machado’s recollections of how he obtained them. To my mind, every item and photo you meet here functions like a little valentine—a heart-shaped thing that, miraculously, has endured. —Alex Jovanovich
Full article in Artforum
Machado’s second solo exhibition at New York’s Gordon Robichaux gallery opens September 7 and runs until October 26.