Keeping Time: The Photographs of Don Hunstein - Hardcover

Pareles, Jon

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1608872246 ISBN 13: 9781608872244

Publisher: Insight Editions, 2013

Synopsis

From journalist and Grammy®-nominated music producer Leo Sacks, and New York Times chief popular music critic Jon Pareles, Keeping Time places Hunstein’s photos in the context of musical and social change, adding an untold chapter to the cultural history

Don Hunstein’s images of music’s most influential artists are unforgettable. As Columbia Records’ staff photographer for more than four decades, Hunstein earned the trust and confidence of the most celebrated singers, songwriters, composers, and musicians of our time, including Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Johnny Cash, Simon & Garfunkel, Aretha Franklin, Leonard Bernstein, Dave Brubeck, Tony Bennett, and Thelonious Monk, to name a few. Hunstein photographed these greats with noticeable informality, demonstrating a perpetual ease with his subjects. With his relaxed approach, he was able to glean private moments from public lives filled with fascinating, telling, and intimate details. Logging his daily assignments, Hunstein created an archive of profound images that parallel the soundtracks to our lives. To this day, his work exists as a unique record chronicling the creative efforts and energies of the world’s greatest musicians. Edited by journalist and Grammy®-nominated music producer Leo Sacks and with text by New York Times chief popular music critic Jon Pareles, Keeping Time places Hunstein’s photos in the context of musical and social change, adding an untold chapter to the cultural history of the second half of the twentieth century.

About this title

About the Author

Jon Pareles is the chief popular music critic of the New York Times, a former music editor at Rolling Stone and the Village Voice, and the consulting editor of the Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. He lives in New York, New York.

Reviews

Don Hunstein had one cool gig. He was the Columbia Records staff photographer from 1955 to 1986. “In an era,” as New York Times music critic Pareles observes, “when major labels took themselves seriously as libraries of culture,” Columbia signed up an astonishingly diverse array of artists, musicians whom Hunstein put at ease because, as Art Garfunkel notes in his foreword, “he turned out to be one of us.” The results make for an irresistible and thrilling retrospective collection of black-and-white photographs documenting performances and historic recording sessions and capturing unique glimpses into the personalities of original and influential musicians. Here are candid pictures of Barbra Streisand, Tony Bennett, Johnny Mathis, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Aretha Franklin, Glenn Gould, Leonard Bernstein, and Johnny Cash. Bob Dylan’s first two albums were graced with Hunstein’s photographs. As for Hunstein, he modestly shrugs off the aesthetic, psychological, even metaphorical dimensions of his keenly observant and strongly composed photographs, explaining “I just did my job.” Well said. But these portraits of artists at work are, without question, works of art. --Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: Insight Editions
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1608872246
• ISBN 13: 9781608872244
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224