Jack Mitchell: an autobiography in photographs - Illustration

Dance Magazine, Sept, 1998

Master photographer Jack Mitchell has capped his long and distinguished career with the publication this month of icons & Idols: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Arts, 1960-1995 (Amphoto Art, $40), a 160-page collection of 160 of his duotone/black-and-white portraits of the era's notables. He got his first gear, a Kodak Baby Brownie and a Federal enlarger, in 1937 at age twelve, and his one and only press card three years later for the New Smyrna Beach Observer, in Florida. He had to wait until 1942 to snap his first celebrity; fortunately, it was a movie star, Veronica Lake, who came through Daytona Beach selling war bonds. Two years later another show business notable came within range: Victor Mature, on tour with the U.S. Coast Guard revue, Tars and Spars. Soon after that, Mitchell himself went into the army.

Stars of stage and screen continued to pass before his lens, and they are well represented in Icons & Idols (along with Lake and Mature), but we are concerned here with his striking images of dancers and choreographers. Mitchell began focusing on dance in 1950, at the invitation of Ted Shawn. His first cover for Dance Magazine, a portrait of Jose Limon, ran in April 1957. Forty years later, his total covers had reached 165, and the photographs that have graced our pages have been too many to count. "Dance Magazine was my major magazine showcase," he says.

In these pages we pay tribute to Jack Mitchell and his great service to dance. The captions are adapted from those he wrote for Icons & Idols; along with serving as a historical record, these comments contain, as a bonus, his personal memory of the making of each photograph.