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Hugh Bell
Hugh Bell
American, 1927 – 2012
Archive Contact: Gartenberg Media Enterprises. For all inquiries related to exhibition, loan requests, reproduction rights, or for more information about this collection contact info@gartenbergmedia.com
Hugh Bell was a renowned art and commercial photographer, who worked in New York City over the course of his entire professional career. Upon his death in 2012, his son-in-law, Richard Martha, was named Executor of the Estate of Hugh Bell. In 2014, a boutique archival firm, Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME), was engaged on an exclusive basis by the Bell Estate to manage the collection of Hugh Bell’s photographs and to further the artist’s legacy.
Hugh Cecil Bell was born in 1927 in Harlem, New York City to parents from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. As a young man he first attended City College, and then graduated in 1952 with a degree in Journalism and Cinematic Art from NYU. After NYU, Bell put his Film Degree to use and found work as a cameraman for television commercials.
Early in his career, Bell was befriended by the cinema verité pioneer, Richard Leacock, who was interested in helping minorities find a professional footing. Bell assisted Leacock on the shooting of several documentaries, including “Jazz Dance” (1952). He also accompanied Leacock on several trips to Spain, where Bell met and photographed the world-famous Spanish bullfighter, Dominguin, as well as Lauren Bacall and Ernest Hemingway. Bell’s friendship with Leacock continued to deepen, and over the ensuing decades, he photographed the Leacock family in an extended series of candid portraits at their family home.
In 1952, Bell shot his first of many legendary photographs of jazz greats,“Hot Jazz”. In 1955, Edward Steichen selected “Hot Jazz” for the groundbreaking exhibition “The Family of Man” at The Museum of Modern Art. Over 2 million photos were submitted and only 503 were selected. The exhibit showcased work from 273 photographers including Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston and Irving Penn. This was the first instance of Hugh Bell’s photographic work being shown alongside these towering figures of modern photography.
During the 1950’s, Hugh Bell frequented all the top Jazz clubs in New York City such as the Village Gate, the Open Door Café and Circle in the Square. He encountered and photographed many legendary musicians, including Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Sarah Vaughn. Bell’s lifelong passion for taking Jazz photographs, often referred to as his “Jazz Giants” series, has been published in books and magazines. His jazz photographs have also graced the covers of innumerable vinyl jazz records.
In addition to jazz clubs, Bell went to and photographed local boxing matches, dance performances and legitimate plays, including Jean Genet’s “The Blacks,” a seminal theatrical production starring James Earl Jones, Roscoe Lee Brown, Cicely Tyson, Maya Angelou, and Godfrey Cambridge, that was mounted at the St. Mark’s Playhouse in 1961.
Bell opened his own studio in Manhattan in the 1960’s. Over the course of the ensuing decades, he worked as a commercial photographer. He produced photographs for print advertisements; many of which were targeted specifically to the Black community.
Interspersed with his commercial work, Bell also focused on portraiture. During this period, he is most known for his images of the female figure. In 1970, a series of these portraits were published in Avant Garde magazine in a feature entitled, “Bell’s Belles”. Throughout this period, he also traveled to the West Indies, focusing on the region of his geographical heritage. He photographed carnivals in Trinidad and Haiti, and daily life in Antigua. He also traveled to Brazil, where he took photographs of the local citizenry.
Hugh Bell passed away on October 31, 2012. He left behind an extensive and wide-ranging photographic legacy that is now ready for rediscovery.
In addition to jazz clubs, Bell went to and photographed local boxing matches, dance performances and legitimate plays, including Jean Genet’s “The Blacks,” a seminal theatrical production starring James Earl Jones, Roscoe Lee Brown, Cicely Tyson, Maya Angelou, and Godfrey Cambridge, that was mounted at the St. Mark’s Playhouse in 1961.
Bell opened his own studio in Manhattan in the 1960’s. Over the course of the ensuing decades, he worked as a commercial photographer. He produced photographs for print advertisements; many of which were targeted specifically to the Black community.
Interspersed with his commercial work, Bell also focused on portraiture. During this period, he is most known for his images of the female figure. In 1970, a series of these portraits were published in Avant Garde magazine in a feature entitled, “Bell’s Belles”. Throughout this period, he also traveled to the West Indies, focusing on the region of his geographical heritage. He photographed carnivals in Trinidad and Haiti, and daily life in Antigua. He also traveled to Brazil, where he took photographs of the local citizenry.
Hugh Bell passed away on October 31, 2012. He left behind an extensive and wide-ranging photographic legacy that is now ready for rediscovery.
Raimondo Borea
Raimondo Borea
American, b. Italy, 1926 – 1982
Archive Contact: Gartenberg Media Enterprises. For all inquiries related to exhibition, loan requests, reproduction rights, or for more information about this collection contact info@gartenbergmedia.com
Raimondo Borea was born in Rome in 1926. By the early 1950’s, he was already photographing candid portraits of orphaned and homeless war children housed in the Boys’ Towns of Italy. Borea emigrated to the United States in 1953. He settled in New York City, where he joined the Village Camera Club and The Circle of Confusion. Frequent meetings held by both these informal groups, attended by fellow photographers with a passion for the Leica camera, led Borea to develop his own highly personal form of creative expression.
About his photographic method, Borea wrote:
Photography enables me to discover, observe [and] understand things about people and their relationships, and it allows me to capture and hold them forever… It is by photographs, rather than by talking about experiences, that I communicate.Photography is an expression of your individuality. You start with color or black and white. Then having chosen your film, the camera, the lens, the developer, the paper for the final print, you can create an almost infinite number of ways to make a photograph.I enjoy being in my darkroom. There is something in the still darkness that brings out your best creative thinking. You relive your past photography and plan your future… You experience a very special sensation holding the end product…the picture you have printed yourself.
Building on his career as a young photographer in Italy, Borea began working full time in 1957 as a freelance photographer, traveling around New York City on his three-speed Dunelt bicycle. He shot photographic essays of now-demolished New York City landmarks, including the Washington Square Market and the Third Avenue El. He also photographed many other cityscapes, including Central Park, Riverside Park, and the New York City subway system. In his picture-making, he often transformed these locales into studies of abstraction. Borea also produced photographic essays from his travels around the US and abroad.
Borea was afforded exclusive behind-the-scenes access to Firing Line, The Today Show, and The Tonight Show, where he captured candid portraits of the show’s hosts, including William F. Buckley, Jr., Johnny Carson, Hugh Downs, Dave Garroway, David Letterman, and Jack Paar. Among the guests that Borea photographed were Fred Astaire, James Baldwin, Salvador Dali, Bette Davis, Farrah Fawcett, Betty Friedan, Benny Goodman, Steve Martin, Ethel Merman, Robert Mitchum, Ayn Rand, Eleanor Roosevelt, Twiggy, Gore Vidal, and Tom Wolfe. Several telecasts of Borea’s photographs were also presented on The Today Show, narrated by Hugh Downs.
Over the course of his career, Borea was an active member in numerous photographic associations. In addition to the Village Camera Club and The Circle of Confusion, he was also a member of the American Society of Magazine Photographers (ASMP) and the American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP), where he served as President from 1974 to 1975. He developed both close personal and professional relationships with well-known photographers, including André Kertész, Ruth Orkin, Esmond Edwards, Barbara Morgan, and John Albok. A number of vintage, signed photographs by and/or of these artists are also part of the Raimondo Borea Photography Collection.
Borea’s photographs were published in numerous magazines (Boys’ Life, Ladies’ Home Journal, National Review, Pageant, and Popular Photography), in books (Bunnies in School [Scholastic]), First thing in the Morning [Cowles], Seymour, A Gibbon [Atheneum], and Who needs parks? [Rapoport Printing Corp.]), and on album covers (Hang on Ramsey ! The Ramsey Lewis Trio (Cadet) and Johnny Carson’s Introduction to New York and The World’s Fair [Columbia.]). Borea also used his expertise in the darkroom to print photographs from the original glass negatives by Alice Austen, one of the first female photographers in America to work outside of the confines of a studio setting. This eventually led to the publication of a book of her photographs, entitled Alice’s World.
Borea’s photographs have been exhibited in New York City at the Gallery of Modern Art, the New York Public Library, and the Art Directors Club. Selected photographs are held in the collections of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Libraries’ Collection, the ASPP archives, Associated Press, the University of Maryland, and SUNY/Albany.
Bern Schwartz website launched!
Photos: Twiggy, David Hockney and Larry Adler by Bern Schwartz
After a successful career in business, Bern Schwartz (1914–78), returned to his hobby of photography at the age of sixty. Within just four years, he established himself as a renowned portrait photographer attracting famous sitters from across the globe. These included prominent members of the British establishment of the time—actors, dancers, artists, writers, politicians and royalty—as well as international luminaries. His portraits were first exhibited to great acclaim at the Colnaghi Gallery in London in 1977. Further exhibitions followed including more recently at the National Portrait Gallery, London in 2008-09, and at the Mishkenot Sh’ananim and the Naggar School, Jerusalem in 2012. His work is represented in public and private collections worldwide.
Thirty years later, these portraits still engage the viewer. Their immediacy and often informal style are due, in part, to Schwartz’s approach. He usually captured his sitters at home or at work. And, with his wife and collaborator Ronny, he conducted extensive research before each sitting. This allowed him, instead of standing behind the camera, to engage in animated conversations with his subjects who barely noticed his click of the shutter release kept in his pocket.
“He caught us when we weren’t posing,” recalled the journalist and broadcaster, Alistair Cooke, one of Schwartz’s subjects, “which is how he captures so much life and animation. It was as if we weren’t even having our picture taken, just talking with a friend.” Schwartz recorded each sitting in his journal, excerpts from which are included in some of the labels that accompany the photographs on this website.
Walter Chandoha: The Cat Photographer – new book published by Aperture
“The Cat Photographer” has totally earned his title.
By David Rosenberg
For the past 70 years, 95-year-old Walter Chandoha has made a career out of photographing cats for both editorial and commercial purposes. This year, Aperturepublished a collection of Chandoha’s colorful cat photographs in the appropriately titled Walter Chandoha: The Cat Photographer.
A self-described lover of photographing “everything and anything,” Chandoha first stumbled into cat photography after he found a stray kitten he named Loco in the snow. He took a few pictures of Loco, submitted them to various contests, and won a few prizes. But things didn’t get serious until the early 1950s when Chandoha began photographing in color. With help from his wife Maria, who was his art director, secretary, animal herder, and also the mother of their six children, he began to play around with a few different ideas, including photographing a kitten wearing a red Christmas ribbon. They submitted that image to some magazines and were thrilled when Woman’s Home Companion called to say they were going to run the image on their cover and offered an incredible payment of $500.
To read the full article:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/behold/2015/12/18/walter_chandoha_is_the_cat_photographer_photos.html
Marvin Koner
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- Elizabeth Taylor
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- Speeding ambulance, 1960
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- Miles Davis, 1955
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- Martin Luther King Jr., with two children, 1960s
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- Drinking coffee at Johnny’s diner, New Jersey, 1950
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- Cuban orphand children holding hands, 1955
MARVIN KONER
1921–1983
http://marvinkonerarchive.com
Pam Koner, Pam@MarvinKonerArchive.com
For nearly four decades, American photojournalist Marvin Koner traveled the world capturing the people, places and personalities that shaped the latter half of the 20th century.
Born into a family of Russian intellectuals in New York City, Marvin Koner would come to see the world through the eye of his camera – observing and chronicling the ordinary and extraordinary.
Stationed in the South Pacific during World War II, Koner served as a First Lieutenant in the Army Photo Intelligence Unit where his interest in photography began. At the end of the war he returned to New York determined to make a career in photography, and enabled by the G.I. Bill, studied with Alexy Brodovitch, the renowned art director of Harper’s Bazaar Magazine.
Spearheading the use of the 35mm. camera and available light, for the next 30 years, Koner’s work appeared in leading magazines, including Life, Fortune, Look, Esquire and Collier’s. During the course of his career Koner received numerous awards from professional journals and served a number of terms as Vice-President of The American Association of Magazine Photographers.
Koner photographed many distinguished subjects, most notably Martin Luther King, Robert Frost, Margaret Mead, Robert Kennedy, Frank Lloyd Wright and Eleanor Roosevelt. Always eager to tell a story, Koner photographically retraced James Joyce’s “Ulysses” main character, Leopold Bloom’s journey through Dublin, covered the exchange of prisoners at the end of the Korean war for Collier’s Magazine, and in the early 1960’s followed the migration by boat, of an Italian family to New York. When the interest in photojournalism diminished and virtually disappeared, Koner turned from magazines to corporate photography on an international scale. His color images of industry, architecture, nature and portraiture have been published worldwide.
Koner died in 1983 at the age of 62. His work in is the permanent collection of the International Center for Photography where a one-man show of his photographs was held there in 1993, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art.
The Jazz Loft, The Limelight, The friendship: Harold Feinstein and W. Eugene Smith
By Judith Thompson
I recently discovered the poster above while going through one of the many boxes of ephemera in the studio. I knew about the show at the historic Limelight Gallery, the first of it’s kind photography gallery launched by Helen Gee. However, I hadn’t known that Harold had dedicated his show to Smith. It is just one more indication of the important friendship between the two of them. I wish I had Harold here now so that he could tell me more about his dedication. These photographs show Smith preparing for his own show at the Limelight in 1957. He asked Harold to help him edit and hang the show. For more on that, read Harold’s earlier blog: W. Eugene Smith and me at Helen Gee’s Limelight Gallery, 1957.
READ THE COMPLETE BLOG POST HERE: on http://www.haroldfeinstein.com/harold-w-eugene-smith-the-jazz-loft-and-helen-gees-limelight-gallery/
Muna Tseng lecture at Paris Photo 11/13/15
On Friday November 13th, Muna Tseng gave a talk at Paris Photo Platform on the Panel Epic Journey: Photographic Legacies. She discussed the management, preservation and upkeep of the Tseng Kwong Chi estate and archive. Photos of the talkare available on facebook, and you can watch the talk here.
Our hearts go out to those lost and hurt in Paris. They are in our thoughts.
Larry Fink and Philip Trager will speak on December 3rd at 6:00pm at Ilon Art Gallery
Malcom X, Rally for Birmingham, Harlem, 1963 by Larry Fink
13-15 West 122nd Street, Harlem, 1979 by Philip Trager
Please join us on Thursday, December 3rd, from 6-8:30 for a special viewing of Harlem: Life in Pictures with artists Larry Fink and Phil Trager. Larry and Philip will speak about their work and hold a question and answer session following.
Ilon Art Gallery 204 West 123rd Street, Harlem.
RSVP loni@ilon.com or 917-270-4696.
Please visit www.ilon.com for more information.
and a great write up about the exhibition
Best,
Loni Efron
Curator, Ilon Art Gallery