1918-1992

Ernest Stone was a very public figure in New York City in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s — a top-10 disc jockey, broadcast personality on Channel 13, actor, and founding member of Off Broadway’s respected repertory company New Stages. 

 

But privately, he led a second creative life, as a photographer, capturing the city in ways that had not been seen before.   Walking miles a day with his camera, he was the intrepid chronicler of a storied metropolis in a time of transition and upheaval, who strode through New York with a love and utter fascination for the process of change. 

 

Except for a one-man show at the Rina Gallery in 1974 (entitled “New York A to Z”), Stone eschewed the business side of fine art, preferring to keep his work almost entirely private.

 

Just before his death in 1992, he told his niece he was ready, “ready for my work to be out in the world.” She is currently cataloging and presenting his art, including a series of collages that supplement his photography in intriguing ways.

 

His oeuvre presents a stunning, eye-opening study of New York in the last century—which like the New York of today (and before, and maybe always), exists on the razor’s edge between the classical and the modern. 

 

Stone’s New York is truly the quintessential New York…on a tightrope between industry and humanism, creativity and commerce, the past and the future.

 

It’s a New York we never saw, but which we recognize instantly.