The exhibit Jazz: Photographs by John A. Reeves will be showing at the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon until October 2. Photographic portraits can be dramatic and humanizing; most of the most successful images used in poster printing history have been those featuring portraits. Take the iconic Farrah Fawcett poster for example - almost every teenage boy had that poster hanging in his bedroom in the 1970s.
The photographs that this exhibition highlights were given as a gift to the Mendel Art Gallery in 1997; there are 70 in all. These portraits include some of the greatest jazz artists of the 20th century such as Marian McPartland, Dizzy Gillespie, Artie Shaw, Diana Krall and Oscar Peterson. The exhibit is curated by Dar Ring of the Mendel Art Gallery and was opened on June 24 to coincide with the SaskTel Saskatchewan Jazz Festival.
John A Reeves is a Canadian photographer who was born in Burlington, Ontario. He is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art. He is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and received a lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Association of Photographers & Illustrators in 2002. His photographic subjects are not only musicians - he has also photographed authors and artists. His work is displayed in such places as the National Library of Canada, the Canadian Centre for Photography, the University of Saskatchewan Archives, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Canadian Cultural Centre in Rome, Italy. He continues to work as a photographer.
