Dirt, the magazine that DARES to print the truth. Complete Reissues 1-5. 2009
originally published 1975, 1976, 1977
by MARK MORRISROE & LYNELLE WHITE. Boston, USA

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First Issue, front and back cover

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Issue One, inside view

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Second Issue, front and back cover

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Second Issue, inside view

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Third Issue, front and back cover

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Third Issue, inside view

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Fourth Issue, back and front cover

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Fourth Issue, inside view

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Fifth Issue, front and back cover

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Fifth Issue, inside view

all images scanned by WFW © LYNELLE WHITE

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Some things never go out of style. Just like these zines by MARK MORRISROE (1959-1989) that I bought last Saturday at Fotomuseum in Winterthur, Switzerland.

MARK MORRISROE‘s short period of creativity in the 1980s was astonishingly productive and stands out because of its individual aesthetic. He captured his friends in painterly portraits and nude photographs; the Polaroid camera became a mirror of his own body, reflecting its illness and decay. He also understood the possibilities for various media as well as their inherent boundaries, adopting ingenious printing methods for each. During the three years leading up to his death he transferred his photographic experiments more and more to the darkroom, where he used pages from porn magazines and X-ray images of himself as negatives.

In the Boston scene of the early 1980s, MARK MORRISROE was a charismatic figure widely known under the name “Mark Dirt”. In 1975 and 1976, even before he studied art, he produced five editions of the collaged, and xeroxed magazine Dirt, together with LYNELLE WHITE. Mixing fact with fiction, the editors relayed the juicy details of underground life. A hilarious send-up of celebrity rags!

I really encourage you to visit the exhibtion at Fotomuseum Winterthur which features early color and black-and-white prints, Polaroids, and Polaroid negatives from which it was possible to make enlargements, as well as the early and late photograms he processed by hand.

For those of you who can’t make it either because you are too far away or you didn’t get a slot, the first comprehensive monograph, realized on occasion of an exhibition at the Fotomuseum Winterthur and in collaboration with The Estate of Mark Morrisroe, is now available in the WFW Store.