Ernest Stone | APAG – American Photography Archives Group

Ernest Stone was a very public figure in New York City in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s —

a top 40 disc jockey with WMCA, broadcast personality on WNET 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. Walking miles each day

through the neighborhoods of NYC, he was an intrepid chronicler of a city in a time of

transition and upheaval, on the razor’s edge between the classical and the modern.

For two decades, Stone, who was born and raised in Flatbush Brooklyn to immigrant

parents, explored his adult home of Manhattan capturing the landscape, politics,

counter-culture and people. He also experimented in abstracts, still life, and a

personal study of the shifts in a post-war Europe.

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 for my work to be out in

the world.” Today, she is working with Augusta Edwards Fine Art to present his story and

his extensive archive, including a series of collages that supplement his photography in

intriguing ways.