Watch a short documentary of The Richard Hambleton Retrospective featuring the photography of Hank O'Neal at Phillips de Pury , New York City from September 9 through the 13th, 2011 presented by Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld and Andy Valmorbida in collaboration with Phillips De Pury & Giorgio Armani.  Click here   Hank's photographs of Richard Hambleton as featured in the June issue of Bliss Magazine.  Download the PDF here: Bliss article   Hank's latest show: Portraits 1970-2010 at The Lancaster Museum of Fine Art. This one man photographic exhibition features noted portraits Hank has taken over the last four decades.  The show will run through February 27th.  For more information please visit the museums web site here: http://www.lmapa.org/exh.html Hank's Portrait of Robert Indiana during his reception at the Four Season's Restaurant in New York City, featured in Art in America: http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/news/2011-01-26/robert-indiana-hope-four-seasons/ Hank's Photographs of Richard Hambleton's Shadow Men on display @ The Dairy, London:  http://arrestedmotion.com/2010/12/viewpoints-openings-richard-hambleton-pop-up-show-the-dairy-london/img_3876_p-nguyen/   Hank's photography graced the facade of the AMFAR pavillion, Cap D'Atibes France, May 20, 2010 C-Span July 2010 —The American Association of University Professors, features The Ghosts Of Harlem American Edition as one of it's choices for The "Best of The Best" University Editions. "The Best of The Bests" Program program, offers librarians the opportunity to share advice and recommendations with their colleagues, and recognizes the valuable contribution that university press books can make to both public and secondary school libraries. (note:The Ghosts of Harlem feature begins at 11:40 and ends at 14:40) :Please Have a look at the video here: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/294474-1 Jazz Times Interview June 2010 — Hank O’Neal: Chasing Ghosts ArtNews Article, March 2010, Friendships In Focus - Berenice Abbott, PDF Hank O'Neal's Lower East Side Project Featured On Swiss T.V. Seventh Man Magazine - "Richard Hambleton — New York" in Milan Featured Artist on Valmorbida.com Artists We Love, Featured Photographs of Richard Hambleton Street Art Swide, Hank O'Neal's Portraits of Richard Hambleton, showing in Milan oneartworld.com - Featuring Hank O'Neal's Richard Hambleton Related Prints for Sale Abitare - Richard Hambleton in Milan featuring a portrait by Hank O'Neal

Sometimes tiny people have enormous spirits and such was Raphael Soyer, a remarkable artist I was privileged to know in the last few years of his life. I knew him through his painting and then got to know him, first because of his friendship with Berenice Abbott, and then when the Swiss-German filmmaker Erwin Leiser undertook a film project with him in 1981.

I saw him at social gatherings and gallery openings, he came to greet Berenice at the Witkin Gallery show in honor of Berenice Abbott – American Photographer, but I never photographed him in any location other than in his studio, where I took my first pictures of him in 1981. We stayed in touch and in 1985 I asked if I could take more photographs, but this time I had a specific project under consideration. He asked what I had in mind and I said I wanted to take many photographs of him at work and produce a small book that would be called Raphael Soyer Paints a Picture. He thought this was a good idea and even suggested we could use Shelley as the subject. I asked her about this but she respectfully declined; she had no interest in being one of Raphael’s “disheveled ladies.” So we had to wait for someone else. Had I known he was ill I would have been very worried.

A few weeks later Raphael telephoned and said fortune had smiled and he was going to begin work on a new portrait with a live sitter, who in this case just happened to be Saul Bellow. I don’t recall the purpose of the portrait, but I was thrilled to have such a recognizable subject involved. Before Bellow arrived, I visited with Raphael and did a number of test shots, with someone else sitting in the chair where he planned to pose Bellow.

The project progressed and Bellow was cordial. I took a number of photographs, 35mm and medium format in black and white and color. The last photographs I took show a serene Bellow with his arm around Raphael. Bellow was a man of medium stature. He towers above the tiny Raphael. Looking at these photographs one would never suspect there was trouble on the horizon, but something happened and I have no idea what precipitated it. In late January 1985, Raphael telephoned to say the project was off and he had no idea why. I don’t know if he ever learned what happened but if he did he never passed it along to me.

About a year later, in March 1986, I telephoned Raphael and suggested I’d like to take a portrait with my large format camera. He was agreeable and we set a date for me to journey up town. It turned out the day he suggested was one where he was painting another portrait. I took both color and black and white, 35mm, medium and large format of both Raphael carefully posed and, once again, Raphael at work. I was very happy with the results. One large format photograph was particularly good. A few weeks later I showed them to Raphael and he was equally pleased. I never took any more; he died the following year at the age of 88.

Raphael Soyer and Saul Bellow, Soyer's Studio, New York City, January 16, 1985