"I think of Art Kane as being strong, say, like a pumpkin sun in a blue sky. Like the sun, Art beams his eye straight at his subject, and what he sees, he pictures – and it's usually a dramatic interpretation of personality."
      - Andy Warhol
(as quoted in ww w.artkane.com )

From an early age Art Kane was destined for success in the magazine world. By age 27 he was art director for Seventeen Magazine. Not content merely to edit others' pictures, he studied photography with the legendary Alexey Brodovitch and began his career anew as a freelance photographer.

His first assignment, for Esquire, was serendipitous: to assemble 58 key figures in jazz for a group shot in Harlem . The resulting picture is considered the signature photo from the Golden Age of Jazz. The present show features the ultimate vintage exhibition print of this image, as well as stellar examples, in both black-and-white and color, from the subsequent thirty years of Kane's inventive portraits of rock and jazz icons. Originally published in Esquire, Life, Look and McCalls, these music portraits range from Duke Ellington and Lester Young, to Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin, to Jim Morrison, the Who and the Rolling Stones. Equally prescient is Kane's fashion photography, which helped immortalize Jean Shrimpton, Verushka, Ali McGraw, Lauren Hutton, and Cheryl Tiegs. Like that of his Paris-based contemporaries Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton, Kane's fashion work (as captured in the controversial book Paper Dolls ) blurred the edges between fashion, film noir, and erotica, and stretched the levels of acceptability in America's mainstream magazines such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar . Kane's honors include the American Society of Magazine Photographers Lifetime Achievement Award, the Newspaper Guild's Page One Award, and election to the Hall of Fame of the Art Directors Club of NY. We are delighted to present the first retrospective exhibition of the late Art Kane's life work.

Number of photographs: approx. 35
Frame sizes: 20 x 24 inches
Linear feet: 150
Rental fee: $4000 for 8 weeks