I was born in Mississippi…the year was 1910..we moved up to Chicago…and I never went back again. -Milt Hinton (1910-2000)

Just recently, I was struck with how small our world is. While attending a meeting for one of my jobs, I became acquainted with Cleveland Freeman. He is a attendance teacher/truancy investigator by day and a Jazz musician by night. As he rattled off all of the Jazz greats with whom he’s played with, I asked,”Have you every played with Milt Hinton?” His eyes widened as he leaned into me,”Milt is the Dean of the upright bass…a legend…” He went on to say, “I’ve never had the honor of playing with him, but I have a story about Milt, I was playing my solo…feeling great about the gig and the crowd was feeling me. I was having my moment when I opened my eyes and saw Milt and his wife as they walked into the venue…I got so nervous. I played out of tune for the rest of the night!” “Milt was a real legend. I really wish I had the opportunity to play with him.” Freeman recalled with visible veneration.

Playing the Changes: Milt Hinton’s Life in Stories and Photographs is an intimate, conversational, and humble telling of his extraordinary life depicted through his personal account, and the images captured from his camera’s eye. His music and stories voiced by him are also included on CD, which accompanies the coffee table book.

We learn within the first couple of pages of his strong relationship with and reverence for his maternal grandmother (mama) who was born a slave, and raised 13 children, including his mother, by herself. His resourceful uncles, Matt and Bob, who saves the money to send for Milt, his grandmother, mother and two aunts, to move to Chicago from Mississippi. The independent spirited Titter, his mother, who he describes as treating him more like a little brother than her son. His Aunts, Sissy and Pearl, who share in the support and nurturing of Milt. While it is clear that Hinton doesn’t have a much of a relationship with his father, we learn that he was born in Manrovia, Africa and came to America with a missionary group. As a young child Milt visits with his paternal grandmother and meets with his father as an adult over dinner and drinks during a week long gig in Memphis in 1940. It is clear that his strongest bonds are with the women on the maternal side of his family.

While Milt may not have been completely happy with his childhood or his relationships with his parents (really, who is?), this story does not read anguished and his tone is never “woe is me”. Even his tone when recounting one of his earliest, most vivid, childhood memories-his witnessing a lynching- is gripping, and unconvincingly resolved. He is 7 or 8 years old. His family is living in Vicksburg, Mississippi. While walking with is aunt he sees fifty or sixty white men dancing, cursing and drinking around a bonfire. He looks up and sees a figure shaped like a person hanging from a long wire cable attached to a branch. Some of the men from the crowd shoot their guns at the dangling body. He remembers the smell. Hinton recalls,”More than seventy years have passed, but I’ll never forget that blaze and watching that body shrivel up like a piece of bacon…” There is no expressed anger or resentment at the oppression and horrors in this Jim Crow era. How did this moment effect the rest of Milt’s childhood? Did Milt have nightmares as an adult…as a result of witnessing this heinous act of terrorism? Does Milt still remember this moment…when he sees bacon shrivel up in a frying pan? These unanswered questions leaves this reader wondering. Soon After this incident his family, like millions of African Americans, migrates north to Chicago.

-My basses are like my children. They’ll be with me forever.

Hinton, like most great musicians would try many instruments before finding the bass. He experiments with the violin, peck horn, bass saxophone and tuba. He played in both his high school symphony orchestra and ROTC marching band. During these early pre bass years, he  with Eddie Cole and was friends with Nat King Cole. While in young adulthood, he works for one of Al Capone’s underlings, stealing bottles of liquor. This brief stint would lead him to one of many fateful events in his life. While driving a panel truck during a delivery, he got into a tragic accident that takes the life of his passenger and almost his. He breaks both his leg and arm and one of his fingers is almost amputated.

This near death experience only makes him more determined to play. He speaks of music as his religion, his salvation-that which sustains him. Hinton would go on to become one of the greatest bassists in the history of Jazz music. Her travels the world and plays with the likes of Cab Calloway, Count Bassie, Duke Ellington and, Benny Goodman just to name a few. Milt Hinton would also serve as a mentor and teacher to younger Jazz musicians like Quincy Jones, Winton and Branford Marsalis and Terence Blanchard.

If playing the bass is his first love, making photographs is a close second. Unlike his knowledge of the bass, Hinton is not formally trained in photography. He gets his first camera as a present for his twenty-first birthday. It’s 1935 and he is on the road with Cab Calloway. Image making, like playing the bass remains a constant throughout most of his life. While on the road he sets up makeshift darkrooms in his hotels where he processes his film and makes prints. His routine would consist of shooting by day,  playing bass by night, shooting after the gig (in the bars and restaurants) and, developing film and printing photographs early mornings.

When Milt presses his shutter, he is not moved to capture sunsets, thunder filled clouds, or pretentious landscapes-nor is he interested in achieving perfect the perfect black and white print with zones 0 through 12 represented. When looking at Hinton’s images, one won’t see the “beautiful”, grainy, dark/high contrast, moody, smoke filled, stereotypical-Jazz club image. The closed eyed trumpet player blowing his lungs out while the sweat glistens off his brow. These “types” of images usually depict for example, the stage lights reflecting off the instrument making it the most prominent subject in the frame. The viewer might see a shadowy figured audience. These images portray the Jazz musician/celebrity- elevated to deity. These “types” of pictures are not included in this body of work.

There are no gods or deities in Hinton’s images. When most photographers of the 40’s through the 60’s were shooting the musicians formally posed on stage or in photographic studios, he makes a conscience decision to break from the norm and takes candid images of his fellow musicians, friends and family. He does this because he wants to show them the places he’s been, people he’s met and greats he’s preformed with. Hinton is aware that while most of the people he’s left behind while on the road will never have this oppertunity, they can experience this through his stories and pictures.

The majority of these images depict his friends in various hotel rooms, on the street, with their loved ones, in the bars after the “set” and in the recording studios. These images are not visual constructs of perceived personas. Many of these photographs are unflattering: a sleeping opened mouth, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong in a messy hotel room with a do-rag on (presumably to keep his conk fresh), the oppressive realities of Jim Crow…, a visibly distraught and prematurely aged Billy Holiday sitting behind a music stand during what would be her final recording session. Much like the war photographs of Robert Capa, or Gordon Parks’ images of the Fontenelle children in Harlem, Hinton’s images are not beautiful. These images force us to face the often times ugly realities of the world. They force the thinking person to question her/ his individual existence- his/her purpose- as it relates to those unspoken, unwritten implications these images raise. These images are our mirrors, ourselves reflected back at us.

This critique should not be considered at all negative or debasing, in fact Hinton’s photographs are honest, bold, and unlike the accompanying narrative, unequivocally political. When one looks at his work within the context of Jazz photography, Hinton humanizes these giants, lifting the persona, making them within reach. Frank Stewart, Roy Decarva, Chuck Stewart and the like, show us what we want them to be. Milt Hinton shows us who they are- parts of them only a close friend and true insider would see. This daring, fresh and potentially controversial point of view in Jazz photography, from a Jazz artist, is the mark of great art.

To Hinton’s own assertion, he didn’t anticipate that his photographs would be considered treasured historical documents, nor did he know that his body of work would result in the publication of three books of photographs. Milt Hinton, the photographer would go on to have exhibitions in some of the most prestigious gallery spaces in the world.

While enthralled in Milts’ story one becomes while reading Playing the Changes and listening to the accompanying CD, the lack of a pointed political viewpoint expressed in this narrative is disappointing. There are no social or political commentaries that place these experiences in real perspective and it read as through life just happened upon Hinton, in Forest Gump fashion. When explaining his Jim Crow photographs he states,”…I wasn’t trying to make a statement. We all lived in the North and the only ways we could deal with the stupidity of the segregation laws was to make fun of them.”  This reader would have liked to know, how were these laws-in Hinton’s opinion…stupid? How was he making fun of them? What conversations did he have with his fellow Black musicians surrounding these issues? If this were a primarily photographic book, these questions wouldn’t be raised; they would be left for the viewers’ interpretation. However, Playing the Changes is primary prose and unfortunately the narrative leaves this reader unfulfilled and left with unanswered questions.

Life “happens upon” us all, but most of us develop a pointed opinion about our experiences! When pivotal moments happen in our lives, we ask ourselves, what does this mean? This quest leads us to make mistakes, to stumble into mishaps and have highs and lows. We run the full gauntlet of emotions…we experience them over and over and start all over again. Our world-view is shaped by these experiences and a unique personal history emerges the gives light to those universal struggles we all face. This is the power of biography and memoir. This is the power of art. For this reviewer, the juxtaposition of Hinton’s bold images and passive narrative is both admirable and unsettling.

In West African society, the griot is a poet or praise singer. The griot is the wandering musician-considered a repository of oral tradition-the community historian. Milt was one of our griots;he leaves us a rich history in the form of music, photographs and narrative. His images are a Jazz historical treasure and the accompanying CD with Hinton’s voice is an added bonus. the work is beautifully packaged, well appointed and finely printed. Playing the Changes: Milt Hinton’s life in Stories and Photographs is a fascinating read. For Jazz aficionados and enthusiasts this work is essential and to most of us Jazz laymen- a welcomed addition to our growing collections of images and stories reflecting the unique rich tapestry of the African American experience. This reviewer is just left with a disconcerting question: Is everyone’s life wrapped up so neatly? – Dana Nzingha Tomlinson

For many the title Blow Up refers to Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film in which a photographer uses his camera to express his lust for a model, and in the same moment, the camera may have caught a murder on his film.  The film sets up a deep critique as to photography’s ability to record reality and to express yearning.  This reference and metaphor lies at the heart of a new book with the same title.

Blow Up is the first retrospective monograph of the artist Lyle Ashton Harris.  Published by Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art for his 2008 traveling exhibition of the same name, this small (8 ½ by 6 1/2 inched) softbound book tracks the Harris’ career through a variety of visual tracks.  Harris’ utilizes many different tangents of photographic medium : from the use vernacular to the handling of collage onto its using photography as a stage for performance.   It is these abilities to transcend forms and find new artistic expressions that warrant a monograph of Harris’ work, for it is imperative for viewers to understand the visual journey that his ideas travel along.  But the form of the book itself halts some of the reading of Harris’ complex work.

The 192-page book takes us from the early well-known work of Harris’ beginning in 1988 and travels through 2006.  Taking us through the catalog of work chronologically, it starts with Harris’ most well known imagery.  These aggressive black and white images Harris’ uses the body serves as a stage for performing his complicated views about race and sexuality.  Identity politics serve as a space of inspiration for these images.  Men and women are clad in white face makeup return the stare of the viewer. (American Triptych (Kym Lyle and Crinoline). They stand in wigs defiantly screaming back at the camera (Ecstasy #2); they are clad in the American flag, yet are often blurred, as if to run away from a gaze (America’s Triptych  (Miss America)) .  They are defiant and strong.

From these images, we see Harris as a different type of image-maker.  The Watering Hole represents Harris’ beginnings with collage work.  In this work he is responding to the story of Jeffery Dahmer, and his violent acts.  Harris created collages, which are then re-photographed which elegantly pair newspaper clippings, advertisements, and text to combine the acts of fetish and fear that Dahmer’s acts represents.

These artistic acts lead Harris to create the piece Blow Up, for which the book is named after.  In 2004 Harris shifts his practice from collage to photographic installations for this work.  Responding to the an Addias ad of the famous soccer star Zinedine Zidane receiving a pedicure from a brown skin man, Harris’ collects imagery that hints the same homoerotic and servitude nature of this inspirational image.   This image appears at the center of the work, and is cloaked with images of sports fans in the stadium, police there to protect both player and spectator and images from popular culture that reflect the fetish for heroes.   Here the act of collage was not made for the camera, but shifts to be made for the space in which the work was installed (at Rhona Hofmann Gallery Chicago, 2004).  And as Harris’ installed the work in different cities throughout the years (Armory 2005, Seville 2006) allowing the city, space and different political environments reflect into the installation of the work.

Lastly Harris’ work travels to Ghana, where Harris lives and teaches part of the year.  Harris’ turns his camera onto the people of Ghana, and allows this African country to speak for itself. Instead of the poor images of Africa that we are often see, Harris’ offers snapshop images of a modern culture complete rich with culture which is complicated by technology and cell phones.   These images were included in the book but not in the exhibition, and are a part of the artist’s collection of images.

Writings by Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cassandra Coblentz, Sarah Elizabeth Lewis and a conversation between the artist and Senam Okudzeto intertwine into the imagery offering a variety of reads of Harris’ work.  These writings dominate the pages of the book.  From the anecdotal (Appiah) to the rather academic (Coblentz) the writers repeatedly focus on the installations of Blow Up, but offer very little commentary on the work that comes before, and more importantly after that pivotal body of work.  Much is mentioned to Harris’ ability to collect and harvest vernacular imagery in his collages, and the history of this creative outlet.  While much is mentioned about Harris’s trips to Africa and the difference in cultural community (reflections are made about being a homosexuality in an Ghana), little is offered in the discussion in the sharp visual shifts of the work.  This creates a confusing visual conclusion to this collection of images.

Design components of this book make it a challenge to read.   The text matches the teal cover of the book, creating a difficult read for the eyes.  Reading also challenged by two types of paper (one cream, and one stark white).  Some reproductions that illuminate the writer’s ideas are in black in white and others are in teal and white, which does not translate a full color image well.   The book is rather small in size, especially when looking at large installation work.  These quirky design elements do not help with the enjoyment of viewing of the book.

This is collection of Lyle Ashton Harris’ work is an important document discussing the ideas and concepts of an often overlooked artist.  More attention should have been spent on the consequences of the books design, and the weightiness of all of the essays.  For these elements dilute the power of this visual collection. – Myra Greene

On February 2, 2000, Songha Thomas Willis was shot to death outside a Philadelphia nightclub. He was 27 years old. The takeaway? A $400 gold chain. It’s the story that lies at the heart of Pitch Blackness, the first monograph by photographer and inaugural Aperture West Book Prize recipient Hank Willis Thomas, Songha’s cousin. It’s also a story that, sadly, occurs all too frequently across America. What makes Pitch Blackness so affecting is that Thomas explores not only the immediate effect of his cousin’s death on his family and friends but also the skewed perceptions of race, sexuality, gender roles, and economic empowerment that contribute to a cycle of violence.

The book consists of six distinct, yet cohesive parts, giving it a novel-like quality. It also includes two illuminating essays on the historical context of Thomas’ work from René de Guzman and Robin D. G. Kelley.

We start with pages from the Thomas-Willis family photo album, which are some of the most powerful images. They set a nostalgic, wistful tone, as they show Hank and Songha transform from babies to toddlers to handsome young men with easy smiles, constantly surrounded by various aunts, cousins, uncles, brothers and sisters. The wistful tone ends abruptly, replaced first by a newspaper clipping reporting Songha’s murder and then images of coffins, graves, tears, furrowed brows, mouths hardened into grim lines, scans of the autopsy report and the medical examiner’s photo of Songha, post-autopsy. It brought tears to my eyes and made me wonder how Hank was able to compose himself enough to take photos throughout that period. Or perhaps taking photos was the only way he could begin to process where he was and why.

The next segment of the book consists of stills from “Winter in America,” a stop-motion animated film that re-enacts the events leading up to Songha’s murder using GI Joe dolls. It’s a creepy and absurd set of images; it shows us how children are taught to normalize violence before they can count to 20, and asks us “What are we teaching ourselves about the value of life?”

This leads us to the sobering “Bearing Witness: Murder’s Wake,” a set of portraits of the people affected by Songha’s life and untimely death. As Hank points out himself, “the impossibility of this task becomes the point” of this project. The truly diverse group of people–young, old, black, white, etc.–are presented as a pair, then a grid of four, then six, then eight, with black squares standing in for the people he couldn’t find and include.

Branded, Priceless #1, 2004 © Hank Willis Thomas from Pitch Blackness (Aperture, October 2008)

The other sets of images, from “Branded,” “Studio X,” and “Unbranded” puts Songha’s death within a larger context about how Black men have been perceived and portrayed in mass media. In “Branded,” he appropriates images, brands, logos and techniques from popular ads to critique a culture that values material wealth above human beings. He illustrates this through images such as “Timberland and Johnnie Walker,” which shows the Air Jordan symbol as a lynching victim, swinging from the Timberland tree logo while the Johnnie Walker mascot stays true to his motto and keeps walking.

There’s also his take on those ubiquitous “Priceless” MasterCard commercials, using a photo from Songha’s funeral and the following copy: “New socks: $2. 3-Piece Suit: $250. Gold chain: $400. 9mm pistol: $79. bullet: ¢69. Picking the perfect casket for your son: Priceless.”

He also appropriates and manipulates ads from Absolut, American Express, the NBA and Chase, combining modern-day ads with images from 19th-century literature depicting slaves. “Branded” is filled with a potent combination of pathos and gallows humor. (”The Original Slam Dunk” is the Air Jordan logo, Jumpman, diving from a slave ship. See what I mean?)

The same combination appears in “Unbranded,” a collection of ads geared toward Black people dating from 1968, the year of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination and symbolic death of the civil rights movement to the present day, 2008.

Hank strips away all logos and copy, leaving the reader with some very disquieting images. The one that stood out to me the most was “OJ Dingo,” depicting O.J. Simpson with a literal third leg, for a boot ad from the 1970s. Incredible. Of course this was created before terms such as “politically correct” entered the lexicon but I also wonder how advertisers were able to get away with the idea that Simpson’s phallus was so huge it needed its own boot.

These images serve to either reinforce ugly stereotypes or undermine the Black Power Movement and the Civil Rights Movement to sell goods no one really needs. One example is a photo of tires rolling through the desert in the shape of the iconic Black Power fist. It is completely perverse and Thomas highlights that perversion again and again, in an engaging and darkly humorous way.

What makes these series so fascinating is Thomas’ argument that not much has changed from the times of slavery and now regarding the way Black people, Black males in particular, are perceived, which is mostly as commodities instead of complex, sentient human beings. During the centuries-long slave trade, propagating the myth that Black people aren’t, in fact, people, made it easier to buy and sell them and keep the system in place. He argues that Black men in 20th- and 21st-century society are still portrayed as 2-D objects, commodities to be bought and sold. He also argues that this perception, along with equating consumerism as a means of empowerment can have dire consequences, such as young men being killed over Air Jordan tennis shoes or cheap gold chains.

The book also includes the series “Studio X,” portraits of young black men and women wearing t-shirts emblazoned with airbrushed photos of their dead friends and family members. While it’s a way to pay tribute to the fallen, you wish that those kind of t-shirt businesses didn’t have so many sales, that their business wasn’t dependent on so many lives being cut short. While I feel “Branded” and “Unbranded” are stronger collectively, and his portraits for “Bearing Witness” are more emotionally resonant, these portraits still probe a tragic subject manner with sensitivity and straightforwardness.

Pitch Blackness runs the risk of appearing maudlin or polemical but Hank Willis Thomas manages to avoid those pitfalls. What comes through loud, clear and strong is a powerful, intimate tribute to a life lost much too soon and a refusal to fall victim to complacency. – Danielle Scruggs