James Hamilton (photographer)
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James Hamilton is an American photographer, best known for his documentation of the New York City film, art and music scene of the 1970s and 1980s.
Life
James Hamilton’s career began as a painting student at Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, NY, where he studied from fall, 1964 to summer, 1966. He swiftly changed gears after securing a summer job at the studio of fashion photographer Alberto Rizzo. It was while employed there that Hamilton learned to use a darkroom and purchased his first camera, a Nikon Rangefinder, which he traded with Rizzo for a Nikon F. His passion for photography was ignited by shooting in the street, as opposed to the confines of the studio. By summer’s end James had decided not to finish his last two years at the school, but to instead remain at the studio with Rizzo.
In 1969 Hamilton began hitch-hiking around the US, spending five months on the road capturing images wherever he landed. While traveling through Texas, the young photographer found out about a music festival taking place in a nearby town. He created fake press passes and spent three days shooting musicians as they performed at the
Hamilton served as staff photographer for numerous publications, including
War photography
During the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, Hamilton photographed war and civil unrest in areas including
Film photography
In 1980, Hamilton began also shooting stills for films. After meeting George A. Romero, Hamilton was enlisted to capture stills for his next two movies, Knightriders and Creepshow, following with work for Francis Ford Coppola on the set of The Outsiders. He went on to shoot extensively with Wes Anderson, photographing the sets of The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and The Darjeeling Limited, as well as on the set of Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale.
Books
In 1977 Pinball! was published by E. P. Dutton in New York.[1] Hamilton shot the photographs and Roger C. Sharpe authored the text. The book provides a detailed chronicle of pinball's rise and becoming of a national pastime, starting with its pre-war roots and tracing its history up to its ubiquity in now long-extinct bars, penny arcades, and coffee houses across the US and in Europe.[2] Hamilton's color photographs of the machines themselves, as well as the places in which they lived and the people who played them, provides viewers with a time capsule of the pinball-crazed era of the mid-seventies.
In 2010, Hamilton published the monograph You Should Have Heard Just What I Seen with Ecstatic Peace Library (a division of Daydream Library), New York. The book revealed his vast archive of previously unpublished photography spanning four decades of the music scene. Containing over 300 black and white photographs, the book includes portrait sittings, performance shots, and reportage. The musicians pictured represent a wide variety of genres such as
References
- ISBN 978-0525474814.
- ^ "FEATURE: Roger Sharpe's "Pinball!"". 2 June 2014.
- ^ "Book Excerpt: James Hamilton Photographs Music Icons". Vanity Fair. 10 November 2010.
- ^ "James Hamilton: You Should Have Heard Just What I Seen". The New Yorker. 17 November 2010.
- ^ "You Should Have Heard Just What I Seen, James Hamilton". 7 December 2010.