Some famous, others unpublished: one hundred photographs tell the visual imagination of the second half of the twentieth century. They are the iconic shots of Art Kane, the American photographer who with his gaze has reinvented and redefined the canons of the portrait, fashion photos, advertising collected in the retrospective Art Kane. Visionary,curated by Jonathan Kane and Guido Harari, which will be inaugurated Wednesday 12 June 2019 in the Chiostro di Santa Caterina a Formiello in Naples.
The exhibition is made up of several sections. The one dedicated to music collects photos taken by Kane of the greatest rock icons of the sixties and jazz of the fifties. Another section, equally rich, deals in a visionary way, also thanks to innovative combinations and stratifications of images, social and political themes, going through some of the issues that have deeply marked American society and beyond, such as the struggle for civil rights of African-Americans and American Indians, religious fundamentalism, the Vietnam war, the nuclear nightmare of Hiroshima, the first steps of environmental awareness and a criticism of consumerism. Finally, a section is dedicated to the story of the changes in American society, through customs, fashion, advertising and eroticism.
In each shot, in each of the worlds told by Kane, the strength and originality of his gaze emerges, which earned him the most prestigious photographic awards and the covers of the major magazines in the world. Because, as he himself claimed “My aim is to show the invisible part of people.”
But Kane is universally known for “Harlem 1958”, the shot of 12 August 1958 in which he immortalized 57 jazz legends gathered in Harlem, on the sidewalk in front of number 17 on East 126th Street, creating the most significant image in the history of jazz. With this photo, Kane won the gold medal of the New York Art Directors Club. His power, in addition to generations of photographers who still draw inspiration from it in an infinite game of quotes, was the subject of Jean Bach’s documentary in 1994 A Great Day in Harlem, (nominated for an Oscar) and, more recently, Spielberg’s film, The Terminal with Tom Hanks. A few months ago the publication of the volume Art Kane. Harlem 1958 – The 60th Anniversary Edition, edited by Jonathan Kane and Guido Harari, edited by Wall Of Sound Editions.