Over the course of his half century professional career, photographer Jack Mitchell chronicled a unique history of creators in the fields of dance, theater, music, the fine arts, and film and television.

“When you would go to Jack’s studio there were photographs on the walls of everyone famous that you ever knew. Everyone on Broadway, movie stars, dancers, whatever, and each shot looked like Jack had known them from the day they were born. He pulled the uniqueness out of you regardless of whether you wanted it pulled out of you or not.”

- Judith Jamison, Artistic Director, the Alvin Ailey Dance Company

Jack Mitchell was born in Key West in 1925 and grew up in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. When he was just 14 years old his parents recognized his talent as a photographer and built him a darkroom. They also bought him an expensive camera which he took to a War Bond rally in 1942 in Daytona Beach to photograph actress Veronica Lake. Not knowing that Lake’s trademark look was to wear her hair obscuring one eye, young Jack asked her to pull her hair back. She laughingly complied and Mitchell sold the photograph to the Daytona Beach Observer newspaper. At age 16 he became the youngest person to whom the newspaper had ever issued an official Press Card.

Mitchell spent his military service stationed in Italy at the end of World War II as a U.S. Army public relations photographer. In 1950, several years after returning to the U.S., he moved to New York City. At the suggestion of modern dance pioneer Ted Shawn, he first concentrated on photographing dancers. William Como, editor of Dance Magazine (and later editor and publisher of After Dark magazine) assigned Jack to shoot many cover photographs for the publication.

In 1957 Jack met Bob Pavlik. Within a few weeks they moved together into a large apartment at East 74th Street and York Avenue that afforded them adequate space for a photography studio and darkroom. Bob became Jack’s business and life partner.

Jack Mitchell was a close friend of Alvin Ailey from the inception of Ailey’s dance company in 1960. Mitchell’s iconic Ailey photographs – spanning decades – capture both the man and his storied company, including photographs of Judith Jamison, whom Ailey chose to succeed himself as Artistic Director in 1989.

In the 1960's The New York Times Arts and Leisure editor Seymour Peck and photo editor Lonnie Schlein became aware of Jack Mitchell’s work and began assigning him to photograph major artists and performers. His work also graced the covers of virtually every major domestic and international magazine, including People, Newsweek, Time, Life, Vogue, Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone, Madame Figaro (France) and Stern (Germany). Mitchell’s career in New York City was filled with photo assignments and cultural and social events with personal friends including Broadway diva Patti LuPone, composer Ned Rorem, dancers Judith Jameson, Kevin McKenzie, and Merce Cunningham, critic Clive Barnes, playwright Edward Albee and Hollywood icon Gloria Swanson. He also photographed the American Ballet Theatre in his studio as well as at a command performance for the Kennedys at the White House.

As a teenager Jack had experimented with dramatic lighting, aperture settings, depth of field and shutter speed – all the technical devices to achieve a trademark look. From his study of dance he learned to direct his subjects and to choreograph them for the camera. For many photo sessions he planned in advance and sketched out his ideas. But he also had the ability to respond instantly to his subjects and knew intuitively how to get them to drop their defenses and shed their public image of themselves, capturing them in a fresh, new light.

Jack Mitchell was one of the last photographers to photograph John Lennon and Yoko Ono just days before Lennon was murdered. Photographs from that session demonstrate how talented he was at putting his subjects at ease and capturing their candid selves. John and Yoko both wore sunglasses initially but Jack got them to remove them and to relax. The resulting images show John as alternately playful and soulful, and reveal Yoko as both protective and loving.

In 1995 Mitchell officially retired. The New York Times paid tribute with a full-page illustrated article about his forty-five years as a major photographer in New York City.

Jack and Bob moved the contents of their apartment and photography studio back to Mitchell’s boyhood hometown, New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Mitchell subsequently continued his career in retirement by making beautiful exhibition prints of hundreds of his photographs.

Adapted from “Jack Mitchell 1925-2013/A Personal Remembrance” by Craig Highberger.

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Photographic Galleries

JACK MITCHELL - COLLECTION MATERIALS

Legacy

In his will, Mitchell left to Highberger his entire photographic legacy, including the complete physical archive and the licensing rights to the photographs. HIghberger subsequently continued to process Mitchell’s collection. In 2020, Highberger selected Gartenberg Media Enterprises (GME) as the exclusive representative of the Jack Mitchell Archive for placement of the collection with an archival institution, for organizing and promoting high profile exhibitions of his work in major metropolitan centers in both the US and abroad, and for acquisition of the copyright to these photographs (that have already generated a significant licensing revenue stream over the past decade). Highberger states that “because the GME team of Jon Gartenberg and David Deitch both have backgrounds working in the fine arts field, they are inspired by the artistic and historic importance of the select group of collections which they have previously placed in cultural institutions. I am therefore pleased to have GME fully on board with finding a permanent home for the Jack Mitchell archive.”

GME’s headquarters is in New York City, led by former MoMA curator Jon Gartenberg. Collaborating with Gartenberg is David Deitch, GME’s Fine Arts Curator, who has worked in both museums and art galleries, curated exhibitions, and made presentations to the ASPP (American Society of Picture Professionals) and APAG (American Photography Archives Group) about GME’s photography collections. Deitch oversees the archives of photographers’ estates for GME. “A discovery for me,” Deitch says, “were the hundreds of photographic body studies contained in the collection. Mitchell was a keen observer of the lines and contours of individual physiques and how they moved in space. He was an organizer who planned each session beforehand and produced images in his small studio that often challenged the laws of gravity and the constraints of the actual physical environment.”

GME’s representation of the Jack Mitchell Archive encompasses the sale of all of the physical materials – Mitchell’s appointment books dating from 1968 on; index cards that catalogue by artist each and every number of his more than 6,000 individual photo sessions; the corresponding negatives, contact sheets, prints and transparencies related to these shoots (both black and white and in color); high resolution digital images of the individual photographs; innumerable publications in which these photographs appeared; scrapbooks, articles and lectures by Mitchell; published books in which his photographs appeared; his camera equipment; and the two documentaries directed by Craig Highberger (including important outtake interviews of Mitchell’s colleagues). According to Gartenberg, based on a detailed inspection of the collection over the course of a week-long onsite visit to the archive, “The Jack Mitchell Archive is extraordinary, not only for the superb visual quality of the images, but also for the study value of the collection in that it documents Mitchell’s creative process from his booking appointments all the way through to the final published photograph.”

GME’s overall objective is to further elevate the significance of Jack Mitchell’s photography career within the larger artistic, cultural and public spheres. The acquisition of this archive by a noteworthy cultural institution would secure the legacy of this unique collection of iconic photographs by an historically significant, yet under-recognized photographer.

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All photographs © The Estate of Jack Mitchell

The Estate of Jack Mitchell is exclusively represented by Gartenberg Media Enterprises, Inc. for placement of the archive and exhibition of his work

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Contact

Please contact info@gartenbergmedia.com for all inquiries related to acquisition of the Jack Mitchell archive, for exhibitions of his work, or for more information on Mitchell and his career.