a Great Day in Harlem 1958 by Art Kane Courtesy of Art Kane Archives

April 27, 2022 Post a Comment

Sometimes one story leads to some other and all of a sudden you're on the phone with an eighty-twelvemonth-one-time standing among a pack of llamas. Let me explicate. (This may seem tangential merely stick with me — especially if you lot have even the faintest involvement in photography, Mad Men or jazz.)

It starts with a photograph:

A Slap-up Day In Harlem, 1958 Art Kane/Courtesy of the Art Kane Archive hide explanation

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Art Kane/Courtesy of the Art Kane Archive

A Great Solar day In Harlem, 1958

Art Kane/Courtesy of the Art Kane Archive

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Click to overstate this key to the photograph.

Today on Marian McPartland's Pianoforte Jazz, an octogenarian named Jean Bach discusses A Great Day In Harlem — the iconic 1958 portrait of 57 great jazz musicians. (It'south also the title of her Oscar-nominated 1994 documentary well-nigh the making of the photo.) It was taken by Art Kane for a special jazz issue of Esquire. But he and the team behind the photo weren't really even photographers.

I wanted to know more, so I contacted Art Kane's archives. Although he is no longer living, his daughter-in-law put me in touch with someone else who was there that day. This is where the story swiftly digresses. Because Steve Frankfurt, who was working as Kane'due south "assistant" that solar day, is a living story chock with more stories, most of which have nothing to do with this photograph.

When he picked upwardly the telephone, Frankfurt was "sitting in a befouled of llamas" at his home exterior New York City. Dismissing my llama-induced consternation, he insisted that his "poor memory" would be of no assist to my photo research. Indeed he may not retrieve all of the musicians names, and that day's exact grade of events may be obscured.

Only if Frankfurt has any shortage of specific memories from that 1958 morning time, he compensates with other personal anecdotes. Similar the fact that, although "assisting" Kane that twenty-four hour period, he'd never before used a photographic camera. "There I was in Harlem, loading the cameras backward," he recalled with a New York lilt. "If anyone wanted to dice, it was me."

Neither Kane nor Frankfurt could have called themselves photographers, just somehow they could become away with just about anything. Art Kane was a highly regarded art director for Esquire mag, and Frankfurt was, well, Don Draper, more or less. The two of them were at the vanguard of a artistic revolution taking place on Madison Avenue in New York City.

Veritable Renaissance men, both Kane and Frankfurt dabbled in writing, in art, in music, radio, moving-picture show, acting, composing, etc. They didn't recollect outside of the box; for them, the box never even existed. Rules were made to be cleaved, and for Frankfurt, it all came together in advertising. The existent "mad men" revolution of the 1960s was not bra-burning or war protestation, but a marketing movement that began in a pocket-size office and reached millions of Americans on couches, thumbing through magazines, watching TV or shopping for groceries.

If you've seen the Old Spice man, you have been touched past Frankfurt's legacy. His advertising campaign for Rosemary's Baby, for case, was 1 of the start instances of guerilla marketing in history. The minimalistic poster showed the silhouette of an abandoned baby railroad vehicle. And instead of advert in the arts department of newspapers, Frankfurt simply published i haunting line in the nascence announcements section: "Pray for Rosemary'southward infant." He helped develop Sesame Street; directed the opening sequence for To Kill A Mockingbird; and was likewise responsible for other i-liners like "In space no ane can hear y'all scream."

In his mid-30s, Frankfurt was made president of Young & Rubicam Advertizing — the youngest man ever to concord such an office. He was pals with Andy Warhol and Count Basie; he visited Picasso; he actually owns an original Superman costume worn past Christopher Reeve. Information technology's no surprise that his son was asked to create the opening credits for Mad Men.

A Not bad Solar day In Harlem was one of Art Kane's proudest accomplishments. Same goes for Steve Frankfurt. Only, despite the photo's significance, the snap of that camera shutter is a mere blink in Frankfurt's biography. Don't believe a give-and-take he says almost retentiveness; he could talk for hours. That is, at least, until his llamas phone call. The stories about Nixon, he teased, are for another time. "We're gettin' off this phone," he joked at the end of our long chat, "you're drivin' me crazy."

Frankfurt in a 1967 documentary: