Arriving in St. Louis: Greats of Jazz in Black and White

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Their music was brilliant, and the photos of them, from a days gone by, have similar flair.

It was the late '50's and early '60's when Herb Snitzer was photo editor for "Metronome," the leading jazz publication in a day when jazz was at a height. He and his lens were on hand to photograph legends like Miles Davis (above) and Ornette Coleman (below) just to name a few.

Now these photographs are on display in the Sheldon's History of Jazz gallery, where they'll remain until September. This is a great chance for an intimate view of some of Snitzer's work. It's shown in some of the nation's foremost museums in the past. I personally look forward to taking an afternoon and looking one of my favorites, Louis Armstrong (below), straight in the eye.

For more info on Snitzer a portion of the news release on the show is below!

The exhibition Herb Snitzer: Jazz Photographs from the Last Years of Metronome focuses on the work that Herb Snitzer made during
the late 1950s and early 1960s for Metronome magazine.

The exhibition is presented in The Sheldon’s History of Jazz Gallery,
unique in its focus on jazz-related art and history exhibits. An exhibition catalogue, published by the Sheldon Art Galleries with
an essay by Benjamin Cawthra and a foreword by Gallery Director Olivia Lahs-Gonzales accompanies the exhibition. A limited
edition portfolio of ten gelatin silver prints of some of his greatest jazz photographs, published by Palm Press, Concord,
Massachussetts, will also available for purchase through the Sheldon Art Galleries.

Herb Snitzer's career spans over 45 years. Born in 1932, he holds a B.F.A. in Interior Design and Photography from the
Philadelphia College of Art (1957), and a M.A. in Education from Goddard College in Vermont (1974). Upon graduation from
the Philadelphia College of Art, Snitzer moved to New York City and established himself as a photojournalist. “I was part of that
early movement of photographers who roamed the streets, day and night, looking for ways to express what we wanted to say about the
chaos of the world in mid-20th century. For me it was about meeting such photographic luminaries as W. Eugene Smith, Gordon Parks,
Cornell Capa and the great Edward Steichen, director of photography at The Museum of Modern Art. Each in their own way
contributed to my early development as a photographer,” Snitzer remembers of this heady time. In New York, where he lived for 7
years, he worked for top illustrated magazines such as Life, Look, The Saturday Evening Post, Fortune, Time and other national
publications, as well as for the New York Times and Herald Tribune, among others. It was in New York that his work first entered a
public museum collection. Edward Steichen, then curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, purchased several of
his photographs for the collection. In 1958, he began freelancing for the country’s leading jazz magazine, Metronome. He became
first Photography Editor, and then Associate Editor of the magazine in 1960. There he met and befriended many great jazz
musicians including Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Count Basie, and Nina Simone, among others. His friendship
with Nina Simone outlasted his work for Metronome and in 1985, he accompanied her on her tour to Switzerland, where he made
a series of sensitive portraits of the great jazz performer. He also produced the covers for two of her albums, The Amazing Nina
Simone and Nina Simone at Town Hall.

In 1963, Snitzer became co-founder and director of The Lewis-Washams School in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, a
school patterned after The Summerhill School in Suffolk, England. Founded in 1921, the Summerhill School is renowned
for its practice of a scholastic philosophy that involves a democratic, open classroom system. One of Snitzer’s monographs,
Living at Summerhill, published in 1964, is a photographic documentary on the groundbreaking school. From 1977-1982, he
was Director of the Polaroid Education Project, Polaroid Corporation, where he developed a program to use their instant
photographic materials to enhance academic learning. Since 1982, he has returned to freelance and fine art photography, with
a special interest in issues of civil and social rights. He moved to St. Petersburg, Florida in 1992 and established the Salt Creek
Art Works with his wife, painter, Carol Dameron.

Snitzer’s work is in collections both public and private, including Boston Museum of African American History; the Museum
of the City of New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tampa Museum of Art;
and the collections of Elton John; Bill Cosby; Bill & Hillary Clinton, and others. He is the author of five books including
The New York I Know (Lippincott 1960); Living at Summerhill (MacMillan 1964); Today is for Children, Numbers Can Wait
(MacMillan 1972); Reprise, The Extraordinary Revival of Early Music (Little Brown & Company 1985); and Such Sweet
Thunder (contract pending). Herb Snitzer is represented by Barry Singer Gallery, Petaluma, California and G. Ray Hawkins
Gallery, Los Angeles, California.

Exhibition curator Benjamin Cawthra is assistant professor of history at California State University, Fullerton, where he
teaches courses in United States cultural history. He also serves as associate director of the Center for Oral and Public
History. He is author of Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography, Race, and the Image of Jazz (under contract, University of
Chicago Press). He received the Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Fellowship in
American Art and was a Morroe Berger/Benny Carter Jazz Research Fellow at the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers
University-Newark. Cawthra spent nine years at the Missouri Historical Society in St. Louis, where he researched and curated
numerous exhibitions, including Miles: A Miles Davis Retrospective, the first major museum exhibition on the East St. Louis
native’s life. He contributed a concluding essay and a series of interviews to a companion volume, Miles Davis and American
Culture, edited by Gerald Early. Born in Washington State, he lives in Long Beach, California.

The not-for profit Sheldon Art Galleries exhibits works by local, national, and international artists in all media. Over 6,000
square feet of the galleries’ spaces on the 2nd floor are permanently devoted to rotating exhibits of photography, architecture,
jazz art and history, and children's art. A sculpture garden, seen from both the atrium lobby and the connecting glass bridge,
features periodic rotations and installations, and the Nancy Spirtas Kranzberg Gallery on the lower level features art of all
media. The Sheldon actively supports the work of St. Louis artists in all mediums and features a dedicated gallery with
museum-quality exhibits by St. Louis artists, past and present. Financial Assistance for this project has been provided by the
Missouri Arts Council, a state agency. Support is provided by the Regional Arts Commission and the Arts and Education
Council.