Big Shots and the Jazz Loft Project

New York came to Durham in two recent photography events––the Big Shots exhibition at the Nasher Museum of Art and The Jazz Loft Project launch party at the West End Wine Bar. Big Shots, an exhibition of Andy Warhol polaroids and prints, is a fun "who's who" of the 1970s New York scene. The Jazz Loft Project is an evocative view of 1950s-1960s New York. The images in these two shows capture two eras of art and music in New York City.

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, my husband and I went to the Nasher to see the Picasso exhibition (more on that later), but found ourselves more engaged in the Andy Warhol show. Polaroids are mounted in rows of five to ten shots in long horizontal frames, creating that Warhol repetition and an almost comic strip feel. My husband, who grew up in New York in the 1970s, peered closely at each picture, trying to identify each face. He would then check the laminated guide to verify or refute his guess. Later, he said, "The famous people weren't as interesting to me as the people I didn't know." To me, the most interesting photo was not of a person at all, but of a statue of the last supper. The label recounted a funny anecdote about it from Warhol's diaries. Years ago, during an obsession with Andy Warhol, I read his voluminous diaries, and he is hilarious. I wish the exhibition provided more small stories like this about the photos. The exhibition also includes some films by Warhol, although the silent, slow motion close-ups of facial expressions of the film I saw are closer to photography than film. I saw a mom and her two young sons watching, and the older boy, squirming, asked, "Can we do something else?" He and the mom got up to leave, but the younger boy didn't want to go. They finally dragged him away, but later I saw him sneak away from them and slip back into the dark film room. On our way out of the exhibition, we saw four large screen print portraits of Nancy Nasher and her daughters that explain the Nasher's connection to Warhol.

Incidentally, Picasso and the Allure of Language was a bit disappointing. Although it contained works we had never seen before and some interesting pieces like a collage Picasso made from Stein and Toklas's calling card, the exhibition's claim of a connection between Picasso's work and writing seemed weak. Some attempts at making a connection seemed ridiculous--something about a vertical shape in a painting referring to the columns of a newspaper--and others were just boring. I would like to have seen the exhibition focus on stories of Picasso's friendships with writers and his opinions on books rather than on the formal elements of Picasso's work.

A few nights later, I met my husband and a friend at the West End Wine Bar in Durham for the Jazz Loft Project book and website launch party. As I looked for my husband, I made my way through the packed bar and up the stairs, following the sounds of jazz. The upstairs was even more packed with people, and two screens glowed with moody black and white photographs of New York City. A jazz trio played; I found out later it included Ronnie Free, a loft resident and the unofficial house drummer at the loft. The Jazz Loft Project, organized by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, includes photographs and audio recordings by W. Eugene Smith, a celebrated photographer at Life magazine. In 1957, he dropped out of his successful suburban life and moved into a crumbling commercial building on 28th Street and 6th Avenue that was known to be an after-hours jazz hangout. He spent the next ten years photographing and recording the jazz musicians he liked to hang out with and the life inside and outside the building. Sam Stephenson has turned these photographs into a book. The project is also a stunning website, a radio series on WNYC, and exhibition that starts at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center and will later come to the Nasher. I can't wait to see the exhibition and am interested to find out how they will incorporate the audio. The website is absolutely beautiful and chock full of fascinating information and stories. The Jazz Loft Project makes you homesick for a New York you never knew, that existed before you were born. Seeing these images and listening to the sound of someone walking up a creaky staircase, the street noise, a horn playing in another room, it's almost like you were there.