The founding father of Roc-A-Fella Records, Damon Dash has opened an art gallery in the Tribeca neighborhood where he lived long before Jay Z made it his own & declared himself the King of New York.

Dash Gallery AKA DD172, located on 172 Duane Street, has come to recapture the flavor of New York of old, where cool kids from all walks of life gathered in their artistic interests & collaborations within its new era sensibility & flavor. A throwback to the era that produced Jean-Michel Basquiat & Andy Warhol, when factory parties consisted of trust fund babies, models, artsy  types & street kids who in their unusually usual suspects mash ups created an authentically global New York era of “Kool” with a special K.

The Nude photography exhibit was a colloboration of different photographers showcasing their photographic genius in capturing the beauty of art in nudity, with special exception made for New York City bred dancer & pop artist, Savior El Mundo’s freshly painted Basquiat/Pollack style homage painting in the roped off back room of the main floor of the gallery.

I found it a bit odd & not very global in the message of beauty, nudity & art that they would have several African-American photographers exhibiting, but no images of African-Americans displayed in the exhibit. My art director friend that I was with decided to ask one of the photographers why there were no Black nudes represented in the exhibit- to which he replied that he actually had one image that he wanted to show of an African-American woman, but it was edited out of the exhibit. He then went on to say that as photogrphers many of them find it hard to find Black subjects for nude photography -to which I must say I find a harder time believing as apposed to believing that they were just edited out of the exhibit. What can we really say about the general lack of inclusion in the mainstream when we are the ones in the power seat editing ourselves out of the picture? This makes me wonder if Black nudity is less acceptable or sellable to the masses of global “Kool” than a White grandmother simulating self pleasure? Things that make you go HMMM!