International 'Idols'
Photographer Jack Mitchell remembers the time Truman Capote sat for him in front of his camera. The year was 1980 and Mitchell had set up his gear in Capote's apartment at the United Nations Plaza in Manhattan to photograph the famous writer for the San Jose Mercury News.
"He was really a very laid back person," Mitchell says of Capote. "I saw these calla lilies in a big vase on a huge coffeetable. There was water in the vase. I felt the flowers and they were silk. So, I asked why he put water in them, and he said it made them look more real."
After a 45 year professional career as a photographer, Mitchell has lots of stories like that. But the pictures themselves are equally compelling. Now more than 130 of them are on view at The Andy Warhol Museum on the North Side in the traveling exhibition "Icons & Idols: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Arts, 1960-1995."
With the exception of five Warhol-related photographs Mitchell has donated to the museum, the images are part of the permanent collection of the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where Mitchell lives in retirement.
He left New York City in 1995 after years of taking pictures for the likes of The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek, Life and People. But the images that remain of the actors, artists, composers, performers and writers that thrived in that city during his tenure there constitute a documentary of the late 20th-century American art scene.
For example, there are photographs of icons of American culture such as Leonard Bernstein, Alfred Hitchcock, Philip Glass, Jasper Johns, Jack Nicholson and Warhol.
A 79-year-old Florida native who became a licensed photographer by that state's standards at the age of 15, Mitchell first set up a studio in 1946 after returning home to New Smyrna Beach from having served in the army.
However, his restless spirit prevailed and, by 1950, he left his hometown at the invite of Ted Shawn, the "Father of American Dance." Shawn is the founder of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in Massachusetts. After seeing Mitchell's staged photographs of costumed figures in a copy of Modern Photography, Shawn invited Mitchell to shoot photographs at Jacob's Pillow.
Since then, Mitchell has become known as one of the great photographers of modern dance, photographing world renowned dancers such as Alvin Ailey, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Merce Cunningham, Louis Falco, Martha Graham and Tanaquil LeClerq.
Images of many of them line the walls at the Warhol -- a stark silhouette of Cunningham in a tense but graceful pose, a montage of portraits of Graham and company shot prior to one of Graham's last performances, a powerful image of Ailey that is equal parts beauty and brawn.
But even though dance was a main focus throughout his career, Mitchell managed to photograph more celebrities throughout the course of more than 5,000 special assignments for newspapers and magazines.
For example, one wall reads like a who's who of 20th-century art with images of Salvador Dali, Robert Rauschenberg, Philip Pearlstein, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein and Louise Nevelson -- all in a row.
Another is dotted with movie stars and musicians such as Meryl Streep, Neil Diamond, John Lennon, Cat Stevens and a young John Travolta.
Even a few of Warhol's "superstars" have been thrown into the mix, such as Candy Darling, the transvestite superstar, and Eric Emerson, who starred in Warhol's film "Lonesome Cowboys."
Another Warhol associate, Paul Morrissey, who directed Warhol's films "Trash" and "Heat," is featured standing and holding a cat in one arm. The cat was Mitchell's. Named Nik, which was short for Nikon, Mitchell found the cat one morning on the way to work.
"I saw this little thing curled up in the corner of the vestibule of the building where my studio was. I thought it was a big rat, but I looked closely and it looked back up at me and I thought, oh my gosh, that's an abandoned cat. So, I picked it up and took it upstairs, and the rest is history," Mitchell says.
That was in the late 1960s. Nik would go on to be included in many post-session shots of famous stars for nearly two decades. One of which was Marcel Marceau, the French mime. "Nik loved Marcel because Marcel was quiet," Mitchell says.
About the photograph featuring Marceau as his famous character Bip in three poses, Mitchell says, "The one you see is where I said I wanted a Bip in the middle being made fun of by one on either side.
"His press agent told me later that Marcel had a terrible headache the whole time," Mitchell says of the session in which he photographed Marceau. "He had just flown in from Chicago, and he really wanted to get through the photo session as fast as he could, but we couldn't get rid of him. Once he caught hold of what I was doing, he just kept going adding things himself.
"The only person Nik ever really hated was Martha Graham," Mitchell says. "I think he thought she was a lion, and he was afraid of her." Additional Information:
Details
'Icons & Idols'
Subtitled: 'A Photographer's Chronicle of the Arts, 1960-1995.'
What: Celebrity photographs by Jack Mitchell.
When: Through April 17. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays; 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays.
Admission: $10; $7 for senior citizens; $6 for children and students; free for members. Fridays half price.
Where: The Andy Warhol Museum, 117 Sandusky St., North Side.
Details: (412) 237-8300 or www.warhol.org .
