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Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker were a new breed of blues band, so Kane decided to shoot them on a railroad track in Chads Ford Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, where the band was performing. After all, what better way to portray the blues than backed by the melancholy of a railway track and the setting sun inflaming Ginger Baker's hair. Drummer Baker, elated over the news that morning of the birth of his son in the UK, would leap up often during the shoot, and roll down the embankment of the train track into bramble bushes, requiring Art's assistant to clean him up. Later, at lunch at a diner in rural Pennsylvania, Baker marched up to a group of firemen who were laughing and pointing at the group of longhaired freaks and said..."What are you laughing at? Look at you in your silly hats"
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Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker were a new breed of blues band, so Kane decided to shoot them on a railroad track in Chads Ford Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, where the band was performing. After all, what better way to portray the blues than backed by the melancholy of a railway track and the setting sun inflaming Ginger Baker's hair. Drummer Baker, elated over the news that morning of the birth of his son in the UK, would leap up often during the shoot, and roll down the embankment of the train track into bramble bushes, requiring Art's assistant to clean him up. Later, at lunch at a diner in rural Pennsylvania, Baker marched up to a group of firemen who were laughing and pointing at the group of longhaired freaks and said..."What are you laughing at? Look at you in your silly hats"
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This photograph was made for McCalls magazine's "Teen Idols" story in 1966. Kane strapped himself into full scuba gear and weighted himself down at the bottom of Sonny and Cher's Beverly Hills pool. He took hundreds of pictures until he got 'The One'.
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Wanting to highlight her strong Gospel roots, Kane tried waving the camera in a circular motion to try to make halo shapes from the light in Aretha's eyes. It worked. This photo is also a rare Art Kane crop—as virtually all his images are composed in full frame.
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Kane shot Armstrong in Death Valley - one of his earliest photographic assignments. He hired a small four seat Beechcraft plane (which Louis Armstrong was none too happy about) to fly from Las Vegas, where Armstrong was performing, to a deserted stretch of road in the Mojave desert, where Kane wanted to make the photograph. Armstrong had to leave his wife Lucille, who accompanied him everywhere, in Vegas, as the plane only had room for Armstrong, Kane, the pilot, and the rocking chair he wanted Armstrong to sit in - on that day the chair was more important than Lucille. Kane was tired of seeing photographs of him playing his trumpet, with his cheeks puffed out, and so during the shoot, asked Armstrong to put down the instrument. This was about portraying him as a man at ease, with the sun setting in the background, and not as a musician or entertainer.
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‘We the People’ was shot for Look magazine in 1961 for a story about the US constitution. Art Kane gathered a group of friends together on a distant hillside, then had assistants hold an American flag directly in front him. Through perspective and depth of field, this created the impression that the the people were standing on top of the flag. Its concept, saturated colour and strong composition also reflect an ongoing passion for flags in this early ‘hit’ for Art Kane.
