Jack Mitchell
Icons & Idols, A Photographer's Chronicle of the Arts,
1960-1995
National Touring Schedule:
- Charles M. Avampato Discovery Museum, Charleston, West Virginia,
September 11 - November 14, 2004
- The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
January 1 - April 15, 2005
- Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond, Virginia,
October 20, 2005 - February 19, 2006
- Icons and Idols:A Photograper's Chronicle of the Arts.
Delaware Art Museum
Wilmington, DE
Opening date: August 1, 2006
Closing date: October 1, 2006
www.delart.org
- Icons and Idols:A Photograper's Chronicle of the Arts
The DeLand Museum of Art
DeLand, Florida
Opening date: April 13 , 2007
Closing date: June 17, 2007
http://www.delandmuseum.com/
Sponsored by:
Darden Restaurants Foundation
Palm Bay Imports -- Wines, Spirits & Beverages
 Jack
Mitchell's legendary portraits of great actors, artists, composers, performers,
and writers of the late 20th century document an American art scene that thrived
in New York City. Icons & Idols: A Photographer's Chronicle of the
Arts, 1960-1995, is a stunning exhibition of 137 black and white photographs
featuring icons of American culture, including Alvin Ailey, Samuel Barber,
Mikhail Baryshnikov, Leonard Bernstein, Alfred Hitchcock, Christopher Isherwood,
Philip Glass, Martha Graham, Jasper Johns, Jack Nicholson, Beverly Sills,
Meryl Streep, Twyla Tharp, Andy Warhol, and others. The exhibition tour is
organized by independent curator Judith Page on behalf of Atlantic Center
for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida where Mitchell was a Master Artist
in residence in 1983. The exhibition is sponsored by Darden Restaurants and
David Taub, CEO of Premier Wine and Spirits
The exhibition contains photographs that are featured in the book Icons
& Idols: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Arts, 1960-1995 (Amphoto
Art, 1998) and are now part of the permanent collection of Atlantic Center.
These masterfully printed selenium toned, gelatin silver prints were completed
during a thirty-five year period in New York City, and represent the highlights
of Mitchell's portrait work.
 Arts magazine described Mitchell's portraits as being "the first time a contemporary
photographer has photographed artists as individuals possessing character
and identification not expressed exclusively through their works. They are
pictured as subjects themselves and not merely artifacts or of secondary importance
to their art." It is this aspect of Mitchell's work that sets it apart
from other photographers of cultural personalities.
Working from his studio in New York's Upper East Side, Mitchell captured
many cultural icons during the height of their fame, and others just before
their big breaks. In the 1960s, his self-assigned goal of photographing the
greatest painters and sculptors living in New York, among them Isamu Noguchi,
Louise Nevelson, Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, Andy Warhol
and Claes Oldenburg, led to a 1974 retrospective exhibition at Bonino Gallery
in New York City.
During the course of his career, Jack
Mitchell photographed thousands of special assignments for The New
York Times, Dance Magazine, After Dark, Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek, Life, Vogue, People, Harper's
Bazaar, and countless others. His photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono,
taken weeks before Lennon's death, held the record as the best selling cover
for People for over 16 years. Mitchell had a longtime working relationship
with The New York Times, and much of his innovative work appeared in
the Arts & Leisure section. He retired in 1995 to the town where he grew
up, New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
Noted poet and critic John Yau, in an essay about
the exhibition, said, "Mitchell's interest in high contrast, costumes,
multiple exposures, and the choreographed moment immediately distinguishes
his work from that of other well-known photographers. His blacks are dense
and velvety, while his whites can be as sharp and exacting as a surgeon's
scalpel. His photographs are sculptural, as they make us aware of volume,
as well as different textures."
Featured venues for Icons & Idols include the Frist Center for
the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee; Charles M. Avampato Discovery Museum
in Charleston, West Virginia; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania;
and the Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond, Virginia.
Additional venues are being pursued, for more information please contact Judith Page.
Jack Mitchell
An Introduction
By John Yau
We
have all heard of someone described as a born writer, ballplayer, or musician,
but I would wager that few of us have heard of someone described as a born
photographer. Perhaps, this is because one simply needs too many things to
make a photograph. However, even though I know that no one is ever a born
writer, much less a born photographer, I am tempted to make an exception in
the case of Jack
Mitchell. For if you know anything about his life, and I don't really
know that much, you realize that Mitchell, at a young age, began to make his
circumstances into a perfect launching pad for becoming a fabulous photographer,
which is to say he worked deliberately at learning how to see what could only
be seen through a camera. Even when he was an adolescent, it was as if he
knew that by seeing something about others that hadn't been noticed before,
and photographing it, he would be able to shape the trajectory of his own
life.
When Mitchell was five years old, his family lived in Key West, and Ernest
Hemingway used to take him on his daily walk to the post office. In Icons
& Idols (1998), Mitchell tells us that this was his "first actual
contact with an identifiable idol," and that this occurred "well
before [he] knew the words 'icon' and 'idol.'" By the time he was twelve,
and his family had moved to New Smyrna Beach, Florida, Mitchell was avidly
reading Walter Winchell's syndicated gossip column, as well as learning how
to develop film and make contact prints from his father. When he was fifteen,
he received his first and only press card, and was being paid for his work.
While in high school, he photographed babies, children, and yearbook portraits,
as well as went to the last showing at the local movie theater four nights
a week.
Mitchell credits the "meticulous and dramatic lighting style of the
black-and-white films of the 1940s" with being the major influence on
the way he sees and uses light. He also possessed a certain fearlessness and
managed to convince adults that he should photograph both Veronica Lake and
Victor Mature. In getting Lake to pull her hair back and Mature to ham it
up, Mitchell reveals his remarkable ability to get well-known figures to assume
an uncharacteristic pose, reveal something about themselves. Although done
while still a teenager, these early photographs possess a sophistication that
belie Mitchell's youth.
In 1946, after he got out the army, Mitchell returned to New Smyrna Beach
and set up a studio. Restless and possessing an ambition that was far larger
than his situation would allow, he decided to "create photographic illustrations
inspired by mythology." Each photograph in this set is a dramatic portrait;
a mythical character aims an arrow or runs down the beach, toward a gilded
apple that has been carefully placed in the foreground. Published in Modern
Photography in 1950, Mitchell's staged photographs of costumed figures
captured the attention of Ted Shawn, the "Father of American Dance"
and the founder of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts. Shawn invited
Mitchell to shoot photographs at Jacob's Pillow in the summer of 1950. The
rest is history.
Mitchell's subjects included world renowned dancers such as José Limon,
Maria Tallchief, Alvin Ailey, and Tanaquil LeClerq, and he went on to become
one of the great photographers of dancers and dance. His photographs of Merce
Cunningham, Louis Falco, and Wendy Whelan-all very different from each other-are
inseparable from our image of them. His photograph of Valentina Kozlova, which
appeared on the cover of Dance Magazine in 1986, conveys the beauty
of ballet, and its incredibly graceful ephemerality, in ways that few photographers
ever have.
In retrospect, what is clear is that Mitchell's photographs are always what
caught other people's attention, got them interested in his work and in what
he could do. It was the opportunity that his photographs of mythic figures
secured for him, however initially tenuous, that got him to move to New York
City, where he had a studio for more than forty-five years. For by the time
Jack got to Jacob's Pillow, all the photographic particulars for which he
would become known were firmly in place. Only in his mid-twenties, he had
been seriously involved with photography for more than half his life.
Given Mitchell's youthful interest in dramatic lighting, make-up in films,
costumes, and the staged and choreographed scene, one begins to think that
he looked at everything as if through a lens, saw in his mind's eye how a
photograph could register someone's presence. It is his preternatural ability
to see the image before it exists that has led him to make some of his greatest
photographs. At the same time, Mitchell has never limited himself to the staged
moment; it is just one of many ways he has worked. In whatever approach Mitchell
takes, and it always seems exactly right, we recognize that he possesses an
immense empathy for his subjects. It is not simply that he knows what would
work with a particular subject; it is that he knows how to get them to shed
their public image, their defenses, relax.
In his tender portraits of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, which Mitchell took
just a few weeks before Lennon was murdered, he has elicited a side of them
that was seldom seen, except perhaps by their closest friends. Attentive to
their pose, their faces, and even to the texture of their skin and clothes,
he infuses his photographs with a palpable tactility. Sensing that we could
(and of course we cannot) reach out and touch the weave of Lennon's sweater
and Ono's scarf is what makes his photographs of them all the more moving.
Around Mitchell, both Lennon and Ono let down their guard. Full of charm we
always knew was there, Lennon mugs for the camera, while Ono looks at him
both protectively and lovingly. In all of Mitchell's photographs from this
session, something of Lennon's touching shyness and Ono's tough-minded sweetness
comes through.
Mitchell's interest in high contrast, costumes, multiple exposures, and the
choreographed moment immediately distinguishes his work from that of other
well-known photographers. His blacks are dense and velvety, while his whites
can be as sharp and exacting as a surgeon's scalpel. His photographs are sculptural,
as they make us aware of volume, as well as different textures.
Mitchell works all the time, even when he isn't working. This is true of
his photograph of Andy Warhol with his dachshund, Archie. The photograph was taken while Andy, the collector and taxi mogul Robert Scull, Roy Lichtenstein, and James Rosenquist were waiting in the Scull's apartment for Ethel Scull to show up, as all of them were to be photographed by Mitchell for The New York Times. Instead of waiting, Mitchell began taking photographs
of Andy. As someone who was supremely conscious of how he was seen, Warhol
was notoriously difficult to photograph. A public figure, he felt more at
ease being Andy Warhol, rather than being himself. In Mitchell's photograph,
he has dropped his public persona. Tightly cropped, the photograph shows Warhol
holding his dachshund close to his face in a moment of tenderness and intimacy.
Mitchell's photograph is a completely uncharacteristic and arresting view
of Warhol, who claimed that he wanted to be a machine.
One of Mitchell's enduring strengths is his undercutting of the qualities
we think of as intrinsic to photographs. Rather than underscoring the bodilessness
of the images, he registers textures and forms. It's like we can reach out
and touch or embrace them. By registering both the face and the texture of
the skin, he endows his photographs with a rare intimacy and thought provoking
sensuality. He transforms Alfred Hitchcock into a large, craggy, immobile
rock overlooking an invisible landscape, which strikes this viewer, at least,
as one way to think of this mischievous director of the macabre. With her
back arched, so that her head and neck are perpendicular to legs, and with
her arms and fingers extending gracefully into space, the ballerina Wendy
Whelan becomes a living sculpture embodying both the strength and fragility
of dance and dancers.
Mitchell's bodies of work include the photographs he has taken of Alvin Ailey
and his company of dancers; ten years of photographs of Gloria Swanson; portraits
of Beverly Sills, Luciano Pavarotti, and other opera stars, both in and out
of costume; all the photographs he did for Dance Magazine; his more
than five thousand special assignments for newspapers and magazines; his photographs
of Andy Warhol and others, such as Candy Darling, the transvestite superstar,
who were in his circle; his photographs of artists such as Marisol, Jasper
Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Philip Pearlstein, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein,
Louise Nevelson, James Rosenquist, Julian Schnabel, and Eric Fischl. His multiple
exposures of the mime Marcel Marceau and the conductor James Levine ring absolutely
true. This is just the tip of the iceberg. For Mitchell worked in New York
for forty-five years, and I am sure he never went a day without taking more
than one photograph.
John Yau is a poet and art critic living in Manhattan. |
