Photography Art Kane; Taken from Art Kane: Harlem 1958, Wall of Sound Editions
American photographer Art Kane was introduced to the idea of the “Big Picture” while serving as a member of the Ghost Army – a 1,100-man unit tasked with creating 20 battlefield deceptions, complete with dummy tanks and fake radio transmission to mislead the German Army during the 1944 invasion of Normandy. “The experience of creating something larger than life really stuck with him,” Jonathan Kane, his son, tells me.
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By 1958, Kane was restless. At 27, he was the hot young art director for Seventeen magazine but he yearned to be a photographer. He got word Esquire was planning a special issue dedicated to jazz and decided to pitch his very first photography story: “A Great Day in Harlem,” which they accepted and published as the issue’s centerfold.
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To celebrate the 60th anniversary of this legendary group portrait, one of the most celebrated images in American history, Jonathan Kane has put together the phenomenal book, Art Kane: Harlem 1958 (out this month via Wall of Sound Editions), featuring texts by Quincy Jones, Benny Golson, and Art Kane, as well as dozens of never-before-seen photographs of Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Thelonius Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charles Mingus, Gerry Mulligan, Count Basie, and Gene Krupa, among others.
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“It’s exciting to see the outtakes, and also rare,” Kane reveals. “My father did not believe in outtakes. He was about his one vision. I’m normally very protective but become bigger than even his original intention. The book is a journey through that day, and a revelation of the intimacy and connections between the musicians, and what is in the mind of a young photographer doing his first major professional assignment, and how it all crystallised in the ‘Big Picture.’”
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Here, in an excerpt from the book, Art Kane looks back on this moment in time, as history was being made on the streets of Harlem.
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Read the Full Story at AnOther Man
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Photography Art Kane; Taken from Art Kane: Harlem 1958, Wall of Sound Editions
