For my third workshop, I visited Sidney Mishkin Gallery on December 2nd.
The gallery is now showing Milt Hinton’s jazz photographs. Milton Hinton was one of the most famous and talented bassist and photographer at the same time. The curator of the gallery explained that he took over 6,000 photos. He carried a camera to take pictures of people he knew and the environment around him. He actually taught at Baruch College for some time. When his funeral was held in New York, musicians over 100 people, including 55 bassists, attended. The musicians played for hours even after guests left.
Three of the photographs showed a group of people standing in front of a motel, a restaurant, and a building. However, it all said “for colored only.” Milt Hinton commented about the picture that they tried to make fun of the situation. Since Hinton and the group were all from New York, they did not experience severe segregation as they did in the south. Another one of the pictures was a woman in a recording studio looking very sadly. To find out, she had a beautiful voice but ruined it with drugs. She was listening to her playback and her expression on the face was indescribable. Her eyes were filled with tears and her shoulders were bent. The light was coming from in front of her so the shadow was right behind her. It allowed her to stand out of the picture, allowing the picture to look three dimensional as well.
Milt Hinton’s photographs not only showed his life as a musician, they also showed others’. Since he was a musician, a lot of people who were in the pictures were musicians as well. However, the photographs portrayed them as themselves, not as musicians. They did not have any makeup on nor they had any outfits on. It was very nice to see the photographs and have them explained.
