February 24, 2022

GME is Proud to Announce our Exclusive Partnership with the Jack Mitchell Archive

February 24, 2022/ Jon Gartenberg

Over the course of a career spanning more than half a century, Jack Mitchell (1925 – 2013) photographed dancers, artists, musicians, writers, and film and theatre performers, in more than 6,000 individual sessions. As part of GME’s ongoing commitment to further the legacy of photographers and their work, we are proud to announce an exclusive partnership with the Jack Mitchell Archives. Our goal is to place this unique and comprehensive collection with a major cultural institution, to secure high-profile exhibitions of his photographs worldwide, and to make available the licensing rights to these reproduced images.

February 03, 2022

Video Librarian List Billie Holiday Documentary One of Best Documentaries of 2021

February 03, 2022/ Jon Gartenberg

BILLIE, directed by James Erskine, is a portrait of legendary singer Billie Holiday based on more than 200 audio interviews conducted by journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl in the 1970s. A compelling look at the jazz legend who should never be forgotten. The film includes rare photos of Billie Holiday taken by Hugh Bell, licensed to the production by Gartenberg Media, the exclusive representative of the Estate of Hugh Bell.

August 17, 2021

GME Takes on Exclusive Representation of the Jack Mitchell Photography Collection

August 17, 2021/ Jon Gartenberg

GME is proud to announce our partnership with the Jack Mitchell archive granting us exclusive representation of the Jack Mitchell archive for placement of the collection with a cultural institution and for high profile exhibitions of his work. Jack Mitchell achieved renown as a freelance photographer for The New York Times Arts and Leisure Section. His stunning portraits of virtually every major figure in the Arts graced the pages of the Times, as well as myriad other national and international publications. They include choreographers and dancers, musicians and composers, actors and writers, and stars of theater, film and television.

GME’s Fine Arts Curator David Deitch and company President Jon Gartenberg recently returned from a work trip to survey the Jack Mitchell archive and to view a recent exhibition of his work at the Huntsville Museum of Art in Alabama.

June 18, 2021

BuzzFeed News Celebrates LGBTQ History During Pride Month with Photos by Hugh Bell

June 18, 2021/ Jon Gartenberg

Hugh Bell, born and raised in Harlem, was an American photographer of Caribbean descent. He became most well-known in the 1950s for his photographs of jazz musicians. Bell also influenced a generation of photographers, most notably of the Kamoinge Workshop. In the 1980s and 1990s, Bell photographed Gay Culture, creating stylish portraits of individuals and couples in both candid and posed moments of self-expression. Particularly noteworthy was his singular effort to depict African-Americans who participated in these celebrations, which include Gay Pride, Wigstock, and the Greenwich Village Halloween parades.

April 15, 2021

Hugh Bell Seen as Key Influential Figure of 20th Century Black Photography

April 15, 2021/ Jon Gartenberg

Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop, a groundbreaking exhibition of overlooked Black photographers, organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, establishes the importance of Hugh Bell's photography. While not a member of the Kamoinge Workshop, Bell is recognized by the curators of the exhibition as follows: “The Workshop’s artists have variously cited the influence of fellow photographers such as Roy de Carava, E. Eugene Smith, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks, Hugh Bell, and Dorothea Lange, all of whom combined observation with their own personal impressions.”

April 07, 2021

GME Shares Photographer Raimondo Borea's Grandson's Animation of His Photo Essay of Ballerina Anna Aragno

April 07, 2021/ Jon Gartenberg

In 2021, Borea’s grandson, Adam Brown, accessed images of the the City is a Stage photo essay from GME to create this animated tribute to his grandfather.

March 29, 2021

Raimondo Borea's Photo of Kenneth B. Clark Licensed to THE BLINDING OF ISAAC WOODARD on PBS

March 29, 2021/ Jon Gartenberg

Premiering March 30th, the PBS special series THE BLINDING OF ISAAC WOODARD presents the story of the horrific beating of a Black army sergeant during WWII that ultimately set the stage for the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which finally outlawed segregation in public schools and jumpstarted the modern civil rights movement. Pictured above, Dr. Kenneth B. Clark was an important expert witness in Briggs v. Elliott (1952), one of five cases combined into Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

February 26, 2021

Hugh Bell’s Photo Featured in BuzzFeed News Black History Month Tribute

February 26, 2021/ Jon Gartenberg

BuzzFeed News features one of Hugh Bell's classic images from his series of Afro-Caribbean photos in their glowing tribute, "The Black Photographers Who Paved The Way For The World We Live In Now," appearing in the online magazine's Black History Month section.

February 09, 2021

Kino Lorber Releases Billie Holiday Doc with Hugh Bell Photos Licensed from GME

February 09, 2021/ Jon Gartenberg

Now available on DVD and via streaming services from Kino Lorber, BILLIE (2020) is a documentary about the singer who changed the face of American music, and the journalist who died trying to tell her story. Directed by award-winning filmmaker James Erskine, the documentary is based on 200 hours of interviews conducted from 1970 to 1978 by journalist Linda Lipnack Kuehl. Kuehl had intended to write a definitive biography of Holiday, and her research comprised interviews—taking up 125 audio cassette tapes—with Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Charles Mingus, and Sylvia Syms, among many other colleagues in the jazz world. She also spoke to Holiday’s cousin and childhood friends, as well as to her attorneys and the FBI agents who kept her under surveillance, due to both her drug use and her outspoken antiracism.

February 08, 2021

Gartenberg Media Notes the Passing of Film Legend Jean-Claude Carrière

February 08, 2021/ Jon Gartenberg

Gartenberg Media notes with great sadness the passing of film legend Jean-Claude Carrière, who wrote screenplays for and collaborated with Luis Bunuel, Milos Forman, Jean-Luc Godard, Volker Schlondorff, Philippe Garrel, Louis Malle and others. Jon Gartneberg, President of Gartenberg Media, interviewed Carrière for a French film documentary during a retrospective of his films at the Museum of Modern Art in 2019.