Art Kane. A wonderful name, and a complete original. A brilliant, visionary New York based photographer whose legacy and legend live on today, and whose work remains unmatched. Kane was the photographers’ photographer, an inspirational practitioner whose approach to portraiture is best summed up when he said “Performance shots are a waste of time, they look like everyone else’s. If you want to shoot a performer, then grab them, own them, you have to own people, then twist them into what you want to say about them.”
Kane built his reputation as an Art Director (the youngest on a major NYC magazine) before embarking on a career as a photographer. He trained with the mercurial Alexey Brodovitch, a tough teacher who had a hand in the careers of legends such as Irving Penn and Richard Avedon.
Every once in a while, we get to show an archive of unmatched, unparalleled beauty. This is such an archive. So go on. Put a bit of sunshine on your walls.
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Art Kane was a huge Bob Dylan fan, and literally stalked a very un-cooperative Dylan around an L.A. rooftop to get the shot. Dylan didn't like being told what to do, and Kane didn't shoot reportage style. Dylan, literally cornered, submitted to the direction and gave up the shot with a smouldering look that says, alright, you win. As Kane later recalled " I told him, "I'm going to stay until I get what I want." I finally manoeuvred him into a corner, he slid down and looked up. I had my shot."
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Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker were a new breed of blues band, so Kane decided to shoot them on a railroad track in Chads Ford Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, where the band was performing. After all, what better way to portray the blues than backed by the melancholy of a railway track and the setting sun inflaming Ginger Baker's hair. Drummer Baker, elated over the news that morning of the birth of his son in the UK, would leap up often during the shoot, and roll down the embankment of the train track into bramble bushes, requiring Art's assistant to clean him up. Later, at lunch at a diner in rural Pennsylvania, Baker marched up to a group of firemen who were laughing and pointing at the group of longhaired freaks and said..."What are you laughing at? Look at you in your silly hats"
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The most famous Jazz photograph ever? This was Art Kane's first assignment as a professional photographer. The signature photograph from the golden age of Jazz - not a bad place to kick off. How could he have gathered 57 of the world's greatest jazz musicians at 10.00am on 126th Street in Harlem one August morning - a time when they would usually all be fast asleep? It was very nearly 58 musicians, but pianist Willie Smith had wandered out of frame by the time the shot was taken. Kane controlled them (as best he could) by shouting directions through a rolled-up New York Times. They are all in there: Monk, Mulligan, Basie, Gillespie, Mingus and more. It was a momentous day for Art Kane, who would later look back: I came up with this really outrageous idea, and watching it unfold the way I'd thought of it; seeing all those musicians moving up there onto those steps on 126th St. was magnificent. I knew from that moment on that this was what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be a photographer. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then Art Kane has been extensively and sincerely flattered: this photograph has been re-created in tribute at least a dozen times by hip hop artists, younger jazz musicians, classical players & doo wop artists, and entire music communities. It was the subject of an Academy Award nominated documentary, 'A Great Day in Harlem' by Jean Bach, which is well worth seeking out. No other picture has become so deeply embedded in the hearts and minds of music lovers worldwide.
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Kane shot Armstrong in Death Valley - one of his earliest photographic assignments. He hired a small four seat Beechcraft plane (which Louis Armstrong was none too happy about) to fly from Las Vegas, where Armstrong was performing, to a deserted stretch of road in the Mojave desert, where Kane wanted to make the photograph. Armstrong had to leave his wife Lucille, who accompanied him everywhere, in Vegas, as the plane only had room for Armstrong, Kane, the pilot, and the rocking chair he wanted Armstrong to sit in - on that day the chair was more important than Lucille. Kane was tired of seeing photographs of him playing his trumpet, with his cheeks puffed out, and so during the shoot, asked Armstrong to put down the instrument. This was about portraying him as a man at ease, with the sun setting in the background, and not as a musician or entertainer.
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Art Kane knew that their image was as 'bad' boys compared to the Beatles 'boys next door' look, and he wanted to reference that, but going into this 1966 shoot for McCalls Magazine with The Rolling Stones he had no preset idea of how he wanted to photograph them. On the way out of his hotel on the morning of the shoot he grabbed some postcards of Queen Elizabeth II from a giftshop. He knew he wanted the band members to do something disrespectful to this cherished symbol of The British Empire. Of course, in the end McCalls magazine were too nervous to run this early 'punk' photograph of Keith, but we're not scared.
