Hugh Bell Photographs in "Art of Jazz: Form/Performance/Notes" – The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery, Harvard University – February 3rd through May 8th

In 2014, Gartenberg Media Enterprises was engaged on an exclusive basis by the Estate of Hugh Bell to manage the collection of Hugh Bell’s photographs and to further the artist’s legacy. We are therefore proud to announce the featuring of photographs by Hugh Bell as part of "Art of Jazz: Form/Performance/Notes" exhibition to be held at The Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African & African American Art. Held in collaboration with the Harvard Art Museums, the exhibition explores the interaction between jazz music and the visual arts.

Billie Holiday (1957)

Billie Holiday (1957)

From The Cooper Gallery Website:

“Art of Jazz” consists of three exhibits at two venues. “Form,” a collection of work drawn from the Harvard Art Museum’s permanent collection, is presented in the Teaching Galleries at the Harvard Art Museums. “Performance” is a collection of books, album covers, photos and other ephemera in the Cooper Gallery’s lobby and front galleries. Scholars Suzanne Blier and David Bindman curated both of these installations. “Performance” at the Cooper includes modernist painter Beauford Delaney; photographers Hugh Bell and Carl Van Vechten; along with a sound installation accompanying the series of artist created album cover installations."


 
Self-portrait

Self-portrait

 

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 Vaughan. 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.


For more information about the Hugh Bell archive and his photographs, please contact:
info@gartenbergmedia.com


All Photographs, © The Estate of Hugh Bell

Jon Gartenberg Lecture for NYU Film Production Class on The Cinematic Oeuvre of Warren Sonbert

Yesterday, Jon Gartenberg was invited as a guest lecturer in Lynne Sach's NYU film production class on the cinematic oeuvre of Warren Sonbert. Below is an image of Jon with Lynne towards the end of the lecture.

Jon Gartenberg & Lynne Sachs

Jon Gartenberg & Lynne Sachs

Jon Gartenberg With Nicola Mazzanti on First Night of Warren Sonbert at The L'Age d'Or Film Festival

Jon Gartenberg presenting with Nicola Mazzanti (director of the Royal Belgian Film Archive) on the first night of the Warren Sonbert retrospective as part of the L'Age d'Or Film Festival in Brussels. Below is also an image of Warren Sonbert's film WHIPLASH on the monitor of the festival theater's lobby.

Jon Gartenberg & Nicola Mazzanti

Shot of WHIPLASH on TV monitor.

2nd Annual American Photography Archives Group (APAG) 2015 Seminar at the ICP Photography Center.

Jon Gartenberg attended the 2015 American Photography Archives Group (APAG) conference from Friday 9/18 to Saturday 9/19 at the International Center of Photography (ICP). GME represents the estates of photographers Raimondo Borea and Hugh Bell.

 
Group photo from the 2nd Annual American Photography Archives Group (APAG) 2015 Seminar at the ICP Photography Center.

Group photo from the 2nd Annual American Photography Archives Group (APAG) 2015 Seminar at the ICP Photography Center.

 

"Where Did Our Love Go? Films of Warren Sonbert" – Program at Media City in Toronto

"Where Did Our Love Go? Films of Warren Sonbert" program at Media City in Toronto, Ontario that played last week. Program was curated by Jeremy Rossen and the films were introduced by Carla Harryman, one of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets with whom Sonbert interacted in his artistic practice.

 
 

Framework 56.1 – Warren Sonbert: Selected Writings. Now Available from Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media

Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media has just released its latest issue devoted entirely to the writings of avant-garde artist Warren Sonbert. The journal features reproductions of Sonbert's original typed, handwritten and published documents. The issue is guest edited by Jon Gartenberg and is organized into sections related to Sonbert's interests in art, music, poetry, travel and film.

Below is an excerpt from Jon Gartenberg's introduction to the issue entitled A Delicate Balance: Warren Sonbert's Creative Legacy:

"For the very first time, a selection of writings by filmmaker Warren Sonbert is assembled together in this special edition of Framework. Although known primarily as an experimental filmmaker, Sonbert and his career extended deeply into other realms of the creative arts. He was an opera, music, and film critic; a kindred spirit to the Language poets; a screenplay author who adapted Strauss’s 1940–41 opera Capriccio; a collaborator on other filmmaker’s productions (Gerard Malanga’s In Search of the Miraculous [US, 1967] and Charles Henri Ford’s Johnny Minotaur [US, 1971]); an essayist on both the fine and performing arts; and a leading theoretician on cinematic montage. The objective of these collected writings, then, is to expand the narrow categorization of Sonbert as a now- deceased, marginalized experimental filmmaker into a broader reconsideration of his entire creative career. This endeavor should serve to reposition his legacy as a truly Renaissance thinker who articulated, in both profound and coherent fashion, how diverse forms of artistic expression can be so deeply connected to the human condition. 

Even for students of film history who are familiar with Sonbert’s cinematic output, the texts assembled in this publication are sure to be a revelation. “Film Syntax,” Sonbert’s most renowned essay, which so lucidly articulates his unique theory of montage, has been printed numerous times in various publications. Aside from this text, however, the other articles authored by Sonbert and reproduced herein are from more obscure publications or now defunct journals, including Shiny, Motion Picture, Tikkun, CinemaNews, Spiral, and the NY Film Bulletin. In addition, numerous unpublished notes, reflections, and essays that were authored by Sonbert—both handwritten and typed—have been gathered together to be published for the first time in this journal…

…We have organized Sonbert’s writings into the following broad classifications: art, travel, music, poetry, and film. These are not designed to be rigid categoriza- tions, but rather as points of departure to demonstrate Sonbert’s facility in his dialogue between all the art forms. Our inclusion of the travel category represents the central role Sonbert’s own journeys across time and space—both physical and creative—played in the development of the artist’s own practice of his craft.9 Only in considering Sonbert’s entire creative output as a coherent entity—filmed, written, and spoken, as well as his lived experiences through travel—can we truly appreciate his genius both as an artist and humanist."

 

GME is the exclusive representative of the estate of Warren Sonbert. For more information on the Warren Sonbert project see our programming page.

RECAP of ASPP Presentation on the Life and Work of Raimondo Borea

GME associates David Deitch and Alex Westhelle preparing for an illustrated talk on the life and career of photographer Raimondo Borea at PhotoShelter in Union Square, New York City on April 2, 2015. Presented under the auspices of ASPP, this unique event was very well attended.  
 

GME’s specialty is working with deceased photographers’ estates, and President Jon Gartenberg also led a lively discussion about his company’s work in excavating, identifying, cataloguing, and repurposing the legacy of overlooked, but historically important, photographers. 

The original announcement about this presentation is noted below:

David Deitch and Alex Westhelle handling original photos and documents from the estate of photographer Raimondo Borea.

David Deitch and Alex Westhelle handling original photos and documents from the estate of photographer Raimondo Borea.


© The Estate of Raimondo Borea

© The Estate of Raimondo Borea

Archivists and dealers Jon Gartenberg and David Deitch of Gartenberg Media Enterprises discuss the life and work of Raimondo Borea, entertainment and NYC street photographer, active from the 1950’s through the early ’80s.

Mr. Borea’s work included celebrity portraits and on-set photography for NBC. He was also an active member and past president of ASPP. Images from the Borea collection: both original prints and projections will be on view. His daughter, Carla Borea,will share her memories and her wishes for the preservation of his legacy.

Mr. Gartenberg and Mr. Deitch will also discuss the issues and concerns in the handling of photographic legacies, and the preservation and marketing of an estate collection.

http://aspp.com/whats-left-behind-photographic-estate-raimondo-borea-new-york-april-2-2015/

"What's Left Behind: The Photographic Estate Of Raimondo Borea," presentation by GME at PhotoShelter

GME is proud to announce that we will be presenting on the life, work and legacy of photographer Raimondo Borea, one of our very own library projects. Hosted by The American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP), "What's Left Behind: The Photographic Estate Of Raimondo Borea" will be presented at the PhotoShelter, Thursday April 2 at 6:30pm.

 
Portrait of Raimondo Borea

Portrait of Raimondo Borea

 

"Through A Lens Darkly" featuring photographer Hugh Bell to air on PBS Independent Lens

Thomas Allen Harris’s film on the history of Black photographers, THROUGH A LENS DARKLY to be shown on PBS as part of their Independent Lens series. The film features the late photographer Hugh Bell, which GME is working with the estate of to archive his collection and promote his legacy. On PBS, Monday, February 16th at 10pm.