I’m kind of late with this but it’s ok. Last week I went to the Sidney Mishkin Gallery again. Last time I went with my english class and as last time it wasn’t like crazy interesting or anything special. Last time it was just a bunch of pictures and same this time. The lady at the place just gave me and kris the little postcard paper thing. I wasn’t too amazed at the pictures. It seemed as though Milt Hinton just followed all of the musicians during the Harlem Renaissance when Jazz was poppin’ (It’s still poppin’ now). I liked the descriptions for the pictures. Each picture could tell it’s own story. I felt like I was going through the jazz period myself just by reading the stories, but obviously I wasn’t. We just kept walking around and kept looking at the pictures. I loved how everyone was usually smiling and having a great time even though there was still a lot of segregation. A lot of the pictures always alluded to segregation between whites and blacks. The jazz players kind of smiled and laughed about it instead. They were just doing their thing and bringing people together through music. I like how Milt Hinton captured all of it in the moment and in all of those places. He was really capturing the essence of the jazz age and you don’t mess with the jazz age, cause jazz is part of New York.
It was pretty cool how he got to go around with all of these musicians and just take photos of them. He became friends with a bunch of cool jazz musicians. Let me see one of you mofos do that. He traveled everywhere from New York to Tokyo. During that time,The Great Depression, people wouldn’t even be leaving their homes, Milt was going all over the world taking photos.
I would really love to do that, but one I’m not an awesome photographer, and two…don’t really know that many talented people to follow around. I would use him as an example in life though. He did what he loved, even when times were tough and work was hard to find. He did things differently.
It’s fun seeing the pictures cause you can put yourself in that position or that point in time rather than just reading about the Jazz age from a textbook. That would be boring and you would get the wrong idea about it. It’s great that Milt Hilton captured all of the pictures how he did. It really points out the joy and happiness music brought to the musicians and to the people. I can relate to that cause music is very universal and it really does bring people together and it can seriously depict a point in time.
Overall it was a good experience going to the gallery again and seeing all the photographs. I wouldn’t mind doing it again. It really lets you think about that time, but maybe another type of exhibit to mix things up.
-Andrey Marioutine