Scope and Content Note
The Peter Angelo Simon Performing Arts Images span the years 1984 to 2019, the bulk of which date from 1984 to 1998. The materials consist of digital and physical still and moving images that capture the working processes of twentieth- and twenty-first-century artists in opera, dance, theater, and street performance. The slides, negatives, photographs, and video footage illustrate Peter Angelo Simon's innovative style of documenting performance from behind the scenes.
The photographs and videos document works by theater director Robert Wilson, choreographers Lucinda Childs and Merce Cunningham, and unnamed street performers. The Photographs series includes black-and-white contact sheets, slides, and a printed photograph, along with a digital file of scans and documents prepared by Simon to accompany the physical photographic materials. This digital file contains a grouping of digital photographs from The Civil Wars (Rome Opera House, 1984 and Brooklyn Academy of Music, 1986); Einstein on the Beach (Brooklyn Academy of Music, 1984); and Salome (New York University, 1986). The photographs of The Civil Wars at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) are from a rehearsal in 1985; the performance took place the following year. The performances at the Rome Opera House in 1984 and at BAM in 1986 were Act V – The Rome Section from The Civil Wars. Workshops held in 1998 at Robert Wilson's Watermill Center are extensively documented, as is a gala event there.
The Videos series contains digital footage from performances and rehearsals of stagings of postmodern dance works: Available Light choreographed by Lucinda Childs and Night Wandering by Merce Cunningham. Also included are some video recordings of street dancers in New York City.
Simon also contributed photographs and video footage of Meredith Monk for the documentary titled Bessie: A Portrait of Bessie Schönberg; this material is accessible on the DVD copy of this film that will be transferred to the Library's Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound (MBRS) Division.