Men in the Cities

The Men in the Cities series made Roberto Longo famous in the 1980s: drawings of sharply dressed businessmen writhing in contortion, a sort of death dance of the modern man. Powerful icons that, as Longo said, "exist somewhere between movies and monuments," Men in the Cities, created between 1977 and 1983, is also an early attempt in merging the divers fields of Longo's artistic practice: sculpture, drawing, photography and film. Longo first appropriat ed images from magazines, newspapers, and movie stills. Then he began to use his friends as models, posing and photographing them himself, among them Cindy Sherman, Brooke Alexander, Larry Gagosian, and Glenn Branca. He would bring them up on the roof of his loft, rig up ropes to them, throw rubber balls, rocks, etc. at them to make them jerk, fling, fall, and photograph them. Our book focuses on the photographic source material of the Men in the Cities series, featuring 70 pictures taken by Robert Longo.