James Hamilton has a romantic eye. A slightly sullen yet bemused gaze suggesting a smart and casual affair between subject and lens in his new book You Should Have Heard Just What I Seen. He is a music lover, indeed a lover of all the sensual arts, but for my intention he is a man who lives by the charm of music. His heroes are the otherworldly: LL Cool Jay, James Brown, Dinah Washington, Frank Sinatra, Smokey Robinson, Billie Holiday.
The hours, days, weeks, months I spent tiptoeing through four decades of James’s contact sheets I realized the soul of the artist gleans genuine respect and distinct recognition from a photographer who shares their emotions. The messengers of music, the “angels”—as Sun Ra would suggest—play for a timeless existence. To capture them with photography is to defy their elusive state, to steal them to common ground, as is the journalist’s duty. But like so few, James Hamilton solemnly suggests camaraderie, friendship, and shared artistry. His photo archive, not only of music genius, but of street life, politics, filmmakers, poets, authors, and artists is an astounding history of late-20th century New York City. A time when the downtown world below 14th Street experienced its ultimate existence as a true village of creative pursuit. One can still feel this last vestige of bohemia by taking a magic turn on any given street at any given time, but it is fleeting. And its vintage glamour has a wizened smile in the shadowy recess of a newly minted lifestyle.
We depend on history to recount what is vanished, missed, dreamed of, and mythologized. In James’s archive I encounter a universe of sweetness, of salaciousness, and a spellbinding grace and natural wonderment that keeps me coming back to the city that defined romance for me and so many others. The romantic eye as love, as music.
Get your copy of the book at Harlem World online store.
Source: Vanity Fair
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