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

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

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.

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

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

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.”

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

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

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).

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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GME Licenses Hugh Bell’s Photographs of Billie Holiday for James Erskine Documentary

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GME Licenses Hugh Bell’s Photographs of Billie Holiday for James Erskine Documentary

Available in the U.S. as of December 4th, 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.

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GME Notes with Sadness the Recent Passing of Stanley Crouch

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GME Notes with Sadness the Recent Passing of Stanley Crouch

A prolific author, essayist, columnist and social critic, Crouch challenged conventional thinking on race and helped found Jazz at Lincoln Center. He proclaimed himself a “radical pragmatist,” defining it this way:

“I affirm whatever I think has the best chance of working, of being both inspirational and unsentimental, of reasoning across the categories of false division and beyond the decoy of race.”

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Common to Perform at Democratic National Convention

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Common to Perform at Democratic National Convention

Common, as depicted in this photo by Hugh Bell, is among the list of performers that will appear this week at the Democratic National Convention.

GME is also happy to share some of it’s images of historical Democratic party icons as photographed by Raimondo Borea.

GME is also pleased to present a rare audio recording during John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign, which comes from GME’s archive of original campaign commercials for television and radio.

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