A Jazz Memoir
Photography by Herb Snitzer

Exhibition Opening Statement

Herb Snitzer considers himself a visual historian and artist, using photography to capture and comment on the world around him. His parents were Jewish immigrants who fled the pogroms of Ukraine, both settled in Philadelphia, where Herb was born in 1932. Herb’s father ran a small neighborhood grocery store and the family lived above it. A good student, Herb qualified for Central High School, a prestigious public institution.

After graduation, and against the wishes of his parents, Herb pursued art. In his junior year of college, he was drafted and served (survived) two years in the Army before an honorable discharge. Snitzer returned home and finished his photography studies at the Philadelphia College of Art.

With his degree in hand, Herb left for New York City to make his mark on the world. He resided on the multi-cultural West Side of Manhattan. He took to the streets to document his new world and found work as an assistant to well know photographers including Arnold Newman, as he also pursued freelance work. One job that would alter the arc of his career was to photograph jazz musician, Lester Young at the Five Spot Café in the fall of 1958. This job for Metronome Magazine opened Herb’s eyes to the world of Jazz and he would soon obtain a permanent position as photo editor until the demise of the publication in 1961. This job gave him access to some of the greatest jazz musicians of the time who played small clubs in New York. These intimate portraits brought him success both professionally and personally. He recounted: “I was drawn to the music, as I was drawn to my art, initially by the spirit and joy I felt every time I heard jazz. This multifaceted and highly original music lifted my soul and spoke to my heart.”

After Metronome, Herb continued his freelance career when an assignment to photograph the Summerhill School in Leiston Suffolk, England changed the trajectory of his life. This school founded by A.S. Neill, allowed children to learn in a democratic setting with no tests, grades, or set schedules. Published in 1964, Snitzer’s book, Summerhill A Lovely World, captured how idyllic this school was. Enamored with the organic way of shaping future generations, he went on to co-found his own school in the New York Adirondacks, the Lewis-Wadhams School. He served as its headmaster for 13 years. Yet photography was always there; the artist in him could not be silenced.

In 1986, he reconnected with singer Nina Simone, who had been a subject of many images and a close friend from those early New York days. She invited him to Bern, Switzerland, to photograph her concerts there. After meeting Snitzer, Hans Zurbrugg, organizer of the Bern Jazz Festival, hired Herb to photograph the festival for three years, 1987-89. This reawakening to the jazz world allowed Herb to reconnect with many old friends and revisit a subject that had been so crucial to his early career. Snitzer explains, “Jazz is more than wonderful music. It’s a statement about people’s desire and thirst for freedom, and with freedom the sweetness of individuality and sense of self-worth.”

Snitzer’s move in 1992 to St. Petersburg, FL, offered him another opening to engage in community activism. His Jewish heritage, involvement with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and an exploration of Quakerism gave him opportunities to photograph diverse people attending demonstrations and protests. He has documented annual Gay Pride celebrations, the 2017’s Women’s March, and the 1996 protests for Tyron Lewis, an 18 year old unarmed African American killed by St. Petersburg police after a traffic stop. The later years of Herb’s life have also afforded him the ability to utilize his early work with mixed media to create collages. This work weaves his lifelong passions into a new artistic expression.

To Purchase Work Please contact: Tony Casadonte at 404-234-4364 Cell & 404-261-6100 gallery or (tony.c@lumieregallery.net) with any requests.

Tour WITH Detail Tags

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Tour WITHOUT Detail Tags

Herb Snitzer – Artist Talk and Exhibition Tour, October 1, 2020

Jews and Jazz I Oct 15, 2020

Jews and Jazz II November 19, 2020

Jews and Jazz III February 4, 2021

Joe Alterman Trio – Jazz Classics, December 9, 2020

Herb Snitzer – Video by Ethan Early © 2020

Louis Armstrong, On His Bus, 1960

Louis Armstrong

Pops was, for me, the most caring and thoughtful of all the musicians I’ve known. I took a weekend bus trip with him and his band, and on that trip made these images. He was a humane and giving person who put me at ease from the start. He loved to joke and that weekend was filled with humor, wisecracks, and some great damn music. The Star of David? It was a gift of the Karnovsky family in New Orleans when Pops was just a child. They cared for him, fed and clothed him. He wore the Star his entire life. He was the least prejudiced musician I ever knew.

Nina Simone, ColPix photoshoot, 1959

Nina Simone

One early assignment from Colpix records was to photograph the talented, but difficult Nina Simone for an album cover. She was living in Philadelphia, so I set up the photo shoot at the Philadelphia College of Art, where I had gone to school. The session took many hours of hard work, but out of it came a cover and set of images which highlighted Nina’s good natured side. Nina and I were the same age and we hit it off. When Nina moved to New York, I saw her all the time, until her career took off and mine took me in a different direction and out of the city. In April 1986, she came to Boston where I was living and we re-connected, which led to me photographing her two concerts in Bern, Switzerland, in December of that year. It was there she introduced me to Hans Zurbrügg, the producer of the Bern International Jazz Festival, who hired me to photograph the festival for three years, 1987-89. This enabled me to reconnect with jazz friends from all over the world and greatly enlarge and enrich my jazz photographic archive.

Thelonius Monk

Pianist Thelonious Monk, United Nations, NYC, 1960

This image is from a concert he played at the United Nations Building. Uncharacteristically, Monk wore a traditional suit and took off his hat when he played – though he kept on his sunglasses. “Monk and I used to play ping-pong. I always thought I would win a game, but I never did. He was like a cat around the table: quick, alert, always in the present… when he made music he was both in the present and somewhere else. Going deeper and higher, right into the stars.”

Miles Davis, Newport Jazz Festival, 1990

Miles Davis

This image of Miles Davis was made at the 1990 Newport Jazz Festival. He would be dead a year later. Miles had just finished his set and was standing in the doorway of his dressing room, contemplating a question from an admirer. As he was reflecting I was quietly making frame after frame, knowing surely as I ever knew when an image was being created that I was making visual history concerning Miles Davis.
Miles was an outstanding musician, less so a human being. I am always reminded of Auturo Toscanini’s comment regarding Richard Wagner. “As a composer I take my hat off to him, as a man, I put it back on.” Miles was always so conflicted about life; an eternal romantic, or so I believed, who never really figured it out. So, he was continually being hurt or betrayed. He developed a hard surface, a macho stance as if this would protect him. Never did. He always reminded me of a male Nina Simone or vice versa. They both could have used a lot of loving.

Artist Statement

Herb Snitzer at his home, St Petersburg FL, January 2020

To look at life in ways which reveal new realities is the quest of any serious artist; new ways of looking and thinking about one’s relationship to oneself and to the larger world on which all of us fleetingly reside.

Art has the capacity to transform and transcend that which is pedestrian and commonplace, giving the viewer (in this case of visual art) the opportunity to see and think about why the artist has produced the work in the first place.

The creative process is not separate from an artist’s total being… or so I believe. I know the history of art doesn’t always support this attitude, but I am convinced that one’s art and one’s life are intertwined, each reflecting the other.

My search began a long time ago when I moved to New York City, determined to be part of the nerve of my generation. I was determined to find my way in the small world of photography. There were no photographic galleries then; we exhibited our work on the walls of coffeehouses. We met in small cafés in Greenwich Village, and talked about art, music, literature, dance and theatre. New York City in the mid-to-late fifties was bursting with creative and highly original people.

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 the 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.

But it was meeting Aaron Siskind that helped turn me inward, toward the creation of images that transcended time and place. His many years of friendship and support helped me immensely, so that I could easily move between what was “inside” and what was “outside.”

I lived and worked in New York City for seven tightly packed and charged years. I had opportunities to find myself in situations that heretofore I had only dreamed about. Photographing Louis Armstrong while traveling with him and his great sextet of dedicated musicians was a singular thrill still remembered with fondness 60 years later. He was very kind to this then 27 year old photographer, on one of my early assignments for Metronome magazine. Meeting Tennessee Williams and Bette Davis, when on assignment for The New York Times Sunday Magazine (in rehearsal for Williams’ play, The Night of the Iguana), provided me with ample time to make a series of portraits of Williams and Davis that still “hold”.

My work has remained inner directed these past 15 years, yet I continue to look outward to see the injustices and inequalities that surround me. I have tried, in my own measured way, to visually comment on what I see and believe about the world(s) within which I live.

I am now in the winter of my life, alive and still curious about this ever-changing and dynamic world – a world filled with too much pain. Early on I said that art transforms and transcends. I deeply believe this. The creative process enhances and ennobles life, changing forever how one sees the world.

Herb Snitzer

Coverage of “A Jazz Memoir” from Multiple Outlets

WSB People To People October 12, 2020

Select this link to view an interview with Breman Museum Director Leslie Gordon and Tony Casadonte that aired on WSB’s People To People program.

WABE – City Lights with Lois Reitzes, September 10, 2020

Select this link to view and listen to this interview on the WABE web site.

AJC “A Lifetime in Jazz” by Bo Emerson, September 18, 2020

Select this link to view and read the article on the Atlanta Journal and Constitution web site.

Eldredge ATL, by Richard Eldredge, September 30, 2020

Select this link to view and read the article on the Eldredge ATL web site.