Sidney Mishkin Gallery – Milt Hinton

I went to the Sidney Mishkin Gallery again, with my friends in order to write something for this blog. The first time we had gone there it was because our English teacher took us there so that we could later on write a paper about what we saw.  We decided to go back there again, because the first time we went it was somewhat interesting and we thought that it would be a little more interesting this time because it had to do with Jazz. When we walked in, we realized that we were the only ones in there and I thought wow this exhibit must suck because there is nobody in here, but as soon as we started to look around I realized that there were interesting pictures hanging up. Although I am not too familiar with famous people of the Jazz era I recognized some of their faces, although I still had to look at the descriptions of the photos in order to learn their names. They say that a picture is worth 1000 words and that’s very true, because if you were to read the descriptions of all the pictures without actually seeing the pictures you would just know some information about the Jazz era, but by looking at the photographs you kind of experience the moment of when that photograph was taken. The photos help you put yourself in that time period and imagine what it would have been like living in that era. The photos also caught the emotion of these people and that also helped me generate a connection with the photo. My favorite pictures are those when the people don’t know that they’re being photographed because then you feel that the photo is genuine and that all the emotions and actions in that photo are real and are happening naturally rather then being planned or directed. The photos in the gallery were either taken by or featured Milt Hinton, who was both a Jazz player and photographer. He is referred to as “The dean of Jazz bass Players” or “The Judge.” I don’t think that I’ve ever heard any of his songs, but his photographs are really good and he had a talent for capturing the Jazz mood.