A Year in the Life of a Pimp
Photographs by Bob Adelman
Text by Susan Hall
Every city-dweller has seen them, ever city-dweller could list the telltale signs: the fur, the gold, the hats, the cars. They are the original macks, the original players. They are Big City pimps—the heroes of gangsta rap. Bob Adelman and Susan Hall dive headlong into their world in the classic investigative docudrama Gentleman of Leisure: A Year in the Life of a Pimp, an in-depth exploration of the underworld figures that populate our streets at night. The first book of its kind, Gentleman of Leisure, originally published in 1972 and now reproduced in a facsimile edition, is a collection of photographs and interviews dramatically documenting the private life of a pimp and his prostitutes. The people who appear in this book are not models: they are real people with real lives. Only their names have been changed to protect the guilty, their stories are real.
Armed only with a camera and a tape recorder, Adelman and Hall entered the lives of the pimp Silky and his women. What they found flew in the face of prevailing prejudices; stripped of stereotype and myth, the pimps and whores that shared their tales were complex people embroiled in romantic dramas, with a code of behavior as intricate as the Mafia’s, and a defined sense of self.
This stunning exposé of Silky and his ladies, Lois, Linda, Kitty, Tracey, and Sandy, explains the passionate bond between a pimp and his “ho’s”; why shrewd, street-smart working girls find glamour in their lives and choose to give all their money to their pimp; and why they stay with him through incarcerations, despite their jealousies, the burden of their work, and occasional beatings. You learn how a square girl is “turned out” to be a ho and a pimp’s “wife.” You visit the pimp’s tailor and see the source of his fly applejack hats and his mink coats—the tools of his game. You spend evenings at family parties: one man and his many wives. You learn from his wives how this pimp commands such passionate devotion, and arouses jealousy and rebellion in the girls. He explains his game. This is a true story. The secret, intimate, and private world of a pimp and his whores is revealed, cinema verité–style, in Gentleman of Leisure.
Bob Adelman has photographed cover stories for countless magazines, including Esquire, Time, People, Life, New York, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and Paris Match. He has photographed or written more than a dozen books and produced countless others. His most recent book is King: The Photobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Abrams, 2004). An award-winning photographer, Adelman has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA grant, and several Art Directors Club Awards. His photographs have been exhibited at the Smithsonian, the American Federation of Arts, and several other institutions. They are included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. Adelman has taught at The Center of Photography at Woodstock, The New School, and School of Visual Arts. He currently lives in Miami Beach.
Susan Hall is a film producer and writer whose work has won awards from the American, San Francisco, Vancouver, and Venice Film Festivals. Adelman and Hall have collaborated on Down Home (McGraw-Hill, 1972), and three children’s books, On and Off the Street (Viking Press, 1970), Street Smart (McGraw-Hill, 1972) and Out of Left Field (Prairie House, 1976). They have used their candid photograph and edited tape recording technique to develop a series of primers to teach reading. Hall lives in New York City.
Hardcover, 7.25 x 10.75 inches, 192 pages, 115 duotone photographs
ISBN 1-57687-311-0
$35.00 / Cnd $46.95