Untitled from the "Empire Roller Disco" series

About the Photographer

Pagnano, Patrick D.

American, 1947-2018

Patrick D. Pagnano’s series Empire Roller Disco (1980) records and memorializes the Empire Roller Disco venue in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York during its peak in the 1980s. This rink was a Brooklyn landmark to many and was known and remembered for being where roller disco and dances such as the Brooklyn Bounce were established. These photographs not only record the unique culture of disco, but also the vibrant community within, despite the surrounding racial tension in the neighborhood at the time. Patrick Pagnano’s images have been included in exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Public Library, Philadelphia Museum of Art and Mois de la Photo a Montreal, in Montreal, Canada. His work is held in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of the City of New York, The New York Public Library, Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Public Library's Brooklyn Collection and the Art Institute of Chicago.