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For Art Kane, a face was never enough. With rock 'n' roll musicians, Kane's approach was to strip away the instruments and take them off the stage, and construct portraits that projected what they meant to him. Armed with background facts on Jefferson Airplane, he immersed himself in their sound. He saw flight as a key part of their identity, not just because of the name of the band. In his notebooks he wrote flying by any means, drugs or fantasy, to leave the ground, enter the rabbit hole...They seem to favour the look of the 'bad guy' in the old Western movies... For the cover picture Kane commissioned six plexiglas boxes - at a cost of $3,000 - a huge expense at the time. They were stacked in an environment suggesting a barren stretch of Western desert, in front of a mound of gypsum on the bank of New York's East River across from the Union Nations Building. He wanted them to float, to appear apart, separated in their individual boxes. This photograph appeared on the cover of Life Magazine on June 28, 1968.
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The Who. They were great, I loved these guys. For me they were like cute little ruffians. They made me think of Dickens, of Oliver Twist, Fagins gang. - Art Kane Pete Townshend always remembered working with Art - in the seventies he admonished another photographer who didn't give them enough instruction: "When Art Kane took our picture, he told us, go there, do this, do that, be asleep, put your head on his shoulder...we like that kind of direction"
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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.
