Sheyla Baykal (American, 1944-1994) "Angel Jack," c-print, stamped lower right, edition of 5, gallery label (Pattern Gallery, New York, NY) affixed verso, sight: 12"h x 17.75"w, overall (with frame): 18.5"h x 24.25"w

Photographer Sheyla Baykal c-print of “Angel Jack” (Jack Co) who was a member of the Angels of Light. Hibiscus, the founding member of the Cockettes. split off from the Cockettes to form a separate theater troupe more in line with their political ideals in providing free theater.

“Baykal was a Turkish-American photographer who lived and worked on the Lower East Side beginning in the 1960s. She was an important and well-known figure in the downtown New York art scene of the 1960-1990s, but little-known outside its coterie. Immortalized in Alex Katz’s painting Cocktail Party (1965), some of her notable subjects included The Angels of Light, The Hot Peaches, and Bloo Lips as well as acts that were part of the Palm Casino Revue, a legendary Off-Off Broadway show she produced and directed. 

Baykal is most well-known for her portraits of her inner circle, including John Eric Broaddus, Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling, Peter Hujar, Agosto Machado, Cookie Mueller, Jack Smith, and Paul Thek, but she also documented the extensive community of poets, actors, and artists during this extraordinary period of cultural life.”

For most of her career, Baykal did not have the resources to professionally print and regularly exhibit her work. As an alternative, she often devised innovative ways to share it, experimenting with early color Xerox technology and presenting 35mm slideshows. Through her friendship with Hujar, her work became a staple in the experimental periodical Newspaper, published by Steve Lawrence between 1968 and 1971 and reissued by Primary Information in 2023. Posthumously, Baykal’s portrait of Candy Darling (1973) was included in  “Luxe, Calme, Volupte,” curated by Allen Frame and Sergio Bessa at Candice Madey Gallery, New York, in 2023. Prior to this, Frame included Baykal’s photographs in an exhibition at MATTE Editions in 2021. In 2000, dozens of Baykal’s photographs of the Angels of Light were featured in “The Nocturnal Dream Show” curated by Daniel Reich at Pat Hearn Gallery alongside work by Jimmy De Sana, Jack Pierson and Joan Jonas. In a New York Times review of the exhibition, Holland Cotter described Baykal as a “vital fringe figure” of the Downtown arts scene who was “on the front lines of alternative-everything in the 1970's, along with her camera.” 

In 1996, Baykal was diagnosed with end-stage cervical cancer and given nine months to live. She approached Penny Arcade and asked her to reprise the role she had played for the artist Jack Smith at the end of his life, a role Arcade had termed "Death Mother." Just as in early life a “mother” fosters the well-being and needs of an infant, Arcade saw the need for someone to help carry someone else's death, ensuring that their goals and wishes were protected, facilitated, and manifested. Baykal gifted Arcade her entire body of work and archive, including all her negatives, slides, and prints and delineated this act in her will.