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

The record Joan LaBarbara made for Chiaroscuro in the fall of 1977 is perhaps the most interesting and unusual production in the history of the label. In the first place, there is almost no jazz on the record; it is simply a recording of remarkable American music of the day. It features music by Joan and John Cage, two artists who are not easily confused with Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington. Some of the music performed by Joan may be improvised but it is not a jazz record in any way, but it is a record that to me is almost perfect in every way. Joan’s performance is remarkable, John Cage’s liner “poem” was created especially for the album, and to me, the photograph used on the jacket is among most interesting I ever took for a Chiaroscuro release.

This is how the photograph came about: After the recording process was complete, Joan told me she wanted to call the album Tapesongs, which seemed to make perfect sense. I then began thinking about a concept for the album cover. I remembered my friend John Watts had recently told me about wanting to get rid of a dozen or more cases of 1/2 inch Agfa recording tape. He didn’t want to sell it; he just wanted someone to get it out of his studio and couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. I sent someone to John’s studio and I soon had a hundred plus reels of old, used one time too many tape. 

My idea was to somehow cover Joan with this tape, but I had no easy way to get the tape into a manageable state. Then I had an idea. The studio in which I took photographs for album covers in those days was about twenty feet high, with a skylight that was even higher. I rigged up a system whereby I could suspend a roll of tape with a coat hanger, hang the tape from a pipe near the ceiling, and then release the adhesive that held the tape in place. As I expected, the tape spooled off the reel, fell untangled to the floor at a steady rate and the entire process took five or six minutes.

It took the better part of a day to spool off all the reels; the process was repeated a hundred times or so, and the end result was an enormous pile of tape, in front of the wall where I wanted to photograph Joan. I called her, said I had a pile of tape I wanted to shape on her to look as though it was a dress of some sort, and asked her to come by on the next sunny day. The sunny day arrived and so did Joan. I asked her to stand under the skylight and then lifted up the pile of tape and draped it over her body. I shaped it as best I could and exposed one roll of film with my Rolleiflex. This is the result and I still like it very much.

There’s a coda. In 2007, walking by The Strand Bookstore, a book in the window caught my eye. It was a book that had been released in conjunction with a series of European exhibitions in 2005 that dealt with record covers by noted artists. Joan’s LP was featured prominently on the dust jacket, along with LP covers by Andy Warhol, Roy Licthenstein and Jean Dubuffet. I was listed as Rollo Phlecks in the book, the name I always used on the records I produced.  I telephoned Joan and told her she was in the bookstore window and she didn’t mind.

Joan LaBarbara, Downtown Sound, New York City, November 1977