"Barbed Light" is one of the photos in the "Lou Reed: New York" exhibit at The Andy Warhol Museum.

By Scott Mervis
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The plan was to get to The Andy Warhol Museum around 4 p.m. to check out Lou Reed's photo exhibition, so I would have some inkling of what I was talking about when we sat down at 4:45.

But at 4 o'clock, the room was an anxious work in progress. The photos that had been hung the previous day were sitting on the floor, and the room was cluttered with a ladder, a cart of tools and some nervous-looking people with hammers and paint brushes.

Courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery "Snapper," a self-portrait by Lou Reed. Click photo for larger image. 'Lou Reed: New York' Where: The Andy Warhol Museum, North Side. When: Through Sept. 2. Information: 412-237-8300. Listen In: Hear Lou Reed talk about his photographs: On Andy Warhol's sense of color and its influence on Reed's photographs On how Reed feels about coming back to the Warhol Museum Related article Pop Noise: My Meeting With Lou

In the middle was Reed -- looking almost hippie-ish in jeans, floral shirt, vest, woven leather bracelet and ruffled hair -- one hand on his hip, one pointing to a spot on the wall. Apparently, Reed had arrived a few hours earlier and didn't like how it was hung. He had also brought one more work with him on the plane, a small abstract of the Empire State Building, that needed to find a place on the wall.

This was throwing off the afternoon itinerary, but you can expect with Lou Reed that he's going to do things his way and you'd better tread lightly around him.

He did after all once fly into a rage and punch David Bowie.

The legendary frontman of the Velvet Underground paid a rare visit to The Warhol last Thursday for the opening of "Lou Reed: New York," an exhibition of both abstract and sweeping, postcard-like photos of the city so associated with his life and work. Rather than the gritty street-level life of New York that informed his music so long, he focuses his camera on the skyline, capturing the bold colors at sunset and the tricks that light will play off the buildings.

His day at The Warhol was capped with an evening reception where he read lyrics from "Songs for Drella," his 1990 tribute to Andy, and took questions from a tentative audience, during which he credited Warhol with breaking the Velvet Underground, one of the most influential bands in history. "If it wasn't for Andy," he said of the Velvets manager, "who knows, I might have been driving a truck."

Two hours before he met the fans, Reed sat down in a third-floor conference room to talk with a journalist, the sort of creature he referred to as "vermin." He's notoriously difficult and short-tempered in these situations, but Reed, keeper of rock's most deadly glare, sat back and seemed, well, mellow during the 15-minute conversation.

When people think of New York, they think of gritty streets, and yet you choose to bring out the natural beauty. What draws you to that?

Well, I see it every day. It's incredibly beautiful. I've been photographing it for years. I think most people, including New Yorkers, don't think of us as an island, and I just wanted to show that. Right around now, the light will be getting better for taking photos of these things. It's hard not to want to take a photo of it. I can't imagine not wanting to take a photo.

The colors in the skyline are spectacular. They almost look like they're photoshopped.

Oh, believe me, they aren't. They really aren't.

The shot with the helicopter, why did you call that one "War"?

After 9/11, I thought there are so many beautiful things here -- now you think of a different thing.

There are so many aspects to photography -- location, composition, editing, printing. Are you interested in all of those?

The real thing is, do you have an eye? You can always have a tech with you. When I did film, I didn't develop it. I was there with the guy who did. I was standing right next to him. With digital you can spend the rest of your life in Photoshop, but it won't change anything if you don't have a good eye. Now what gets interesting to me is when you get into megapixels, because you can take a picture and crop a detail. Boom. But you have to have a good eye. You can't help a musician who's tone deaf.

Do you feel like you always had that eye, or did you have learn to develop it?

I think you either have it or you don't. But if you do, you can certainly be taught what goes where and how. Framing. I learned framing from Wim Wenders.

[Steve Asher, Reed's New York gallery manager, interjects] Lou, what did you get from Wim Wenders?

He's a painter. He thinks of himself as a painter. One of the things I like you can do with digital is make very painterly photos.

Like "Sunburn" or the one you brought today of the Empire State Building?

I am mad about that particular photo -- "Mr. Empire." It's looking at the Empire State Building almost as if it's a vacuum tube. It's all about the light and the lens. It's all trying to do things with natural light. I have so many of those trying to get it right. With digital, you can see you did it wrong 200 times in a row, and start again, and start again, and start again.

We're in The Warhol Museum, so I wanted to ask what you learned from Andy in terms of the visual aesthetic. Were you taking photos at that time?

I was playing around with photography and video, and I was very much paying attention to Billy Name and those incredibly high-contrast black-and-white photos. And I had video cameras that had modified so I could do what Billy did, only it would be moving. What was interesting to me about Andy was 1) how he would frame; and 2) his use of color in his silkscreens. Those colors, you go to Photoshop now and it's Warhol all over the place, it's unbelievable. I have a program where, instant Andy. I've used it for things that I wanted to use for T-shirts and I wanted it to look like Andy would have done it. ... Look, he did color combinations that were very unusual for then [he points to a neon green and orange portrait of Nixon] that now, it's all over the place. People wearing pink shirts. Things have changed a lot. And his combinations of colors, he was such a genius with color. Of course, I'm thinking about that when I look at the sky. All those skies that I took pictures of -- you only see a color like that in nature, although God knows what chemicals are coming over from Hoboken. That was a line from that Jim Carrey movie "The Mask" -- "Oh, look at that beautiful smog over Hoboken," whatever it is.

How do you feel being in here surrounded by his work?

I was always surrounded by his work, I was in the middle of it, I was part of his work. But I do enjoy coming back here not as a member of the Velvet Underground. Coming in through the door of pictures as opposed to from the door of music.

Otherwise I would be asking you all about the Velvet Underground right now and you would probably not enjoy that.

Probably not [laughter in the room]. What's interesting is Andy, the silkscreens he did, they were other people's photos and he would crop it or do whatever. His photos are kind of just casual photos. I've never seen a photo of his where -- even the "Screen Tests," that was framed motion picture film and he would set it and would walk away -- his photo photos are just kind of throwaway, unless he was photographing himself to do a silkscreen. His photos of parties, there was nothing serious there.

Just capturing a moment.

Yeah, no other impetus. Whereas the "Empire State Building," I think the idea there was you had a moving picture, meaning you would have this on your wall in your apartment and you would look at it when you felt like it, that's why he slowed the frames down at "the good part," when the light is really changing. But I don't think you're supposed to watch it constantly. In real life you wouldn't watch it constantly. But what a great thing to have on your wall moving.

I wanted to ask you about doing "Berlin" this summer in Europe. Why did you choose to revisit that now?

A couple people that I do projects with have been wanting to do this for a long time. And things seem to have come together. We did it [in December] at a very small place, St. Ann's Warehouse, very small audience, Julian Schnabel directing it and doing the sets. And we got Bob Ezrin [the producer], Steve Hunter, the original guitarist. And we did this whole thing and we only did it four times, not for a lot of people either. We had everyone together who wanted to do it, and I thought, 'Yeah, why don't you do it?'

It's a very emotional record.

All my records are emotional records.