A Gallery of Portraits

..it's what I do

Most of my life, I’ve been making portrait photographs for various magazines, and advertising clients. I’ve also done this for clients who want images of their kids, of themselves, and their wives and families. Many are and were, friends; but also people who have made a positive difference in this life, and who have achieved fame beyond the norm.

I plan to continue shooting for as long as I can, and add these images to a considerable collection now being archived at UMASS Amherst.

photomota@comcast.netHerein are several of my personal favorites, whom you might meet later on, elsewhere in the Substack I have only just begun—some with a bit of their story, but mostly because, well, I just like them.

Here is Arnold Francis Powell, PhD. Absurdist playwright and theatre director. Professor of English, Drama, and Speech at Birmingham-Southern College from 1947 to 1978.

And then there’s Diana Vreeland, the editor of Vogue Magazine for decades and who was the subject of a picture essay for LIFE magazine back in 1966. She demanded, and got, editorial permission to decline if she didn’t like how she looked in the story (the only time ever this was allowed), and she exercised her right, so the story was never published. After she died, the New Yorker magazine ran this one full page, with a comment that the pictures were for sale for thousands of dollars. Many of my pictures from that shoot made it into the books written about her. Sadly, she retained the negatives and they have been lost somewhere. Alas.

The first “City Stages,” a weekend celebration of local talent in Birmingham AL where I lived for many years, presented a jazz band led by the brilliant musician Dr. Amos Gordon, who onstage presence was as dynamically cool as any I’ve ever seen. Also, he was the teacher of many celebrated jazz icons. I insisted he come to my studio so I could take his picture. It turned out swell, and later I gave a life size print to the Birmingham Jazz Hall of Fame. Here it is:

Here’s the guy who started and ran the Peace Corps, R. Sargent Shriver. I was the first PC photographer, 1961-63. There will be more about this wonderful guy in future Substacks.

When Harry Belafonte directed his first TV special “The Strollin' Twenties,” written by Langston Hugues, LIFE gave me the assignment to cover it, I was in photography heaven. Literally surrounded by stars, I thought this picture was the best. Alas, it didn’t make the cut, even though he was the writer.

And there was the Duke:

And, of course:

Lastly: Mississippi John Hurt. USIA asked for a compendium of folk musicians, back in the day it was “new” and fashionable. John was the nicest guy, and the best of the folk icons. We worked for quite a while, he, looking down, in his black outfit and black hat in a dark room. I knew I wasn’t getting it. Finally, with the last frame of film in the camera, I said: “Hey John, would you please look up at that light?” He did.

See you soon, with plenty more snaps.