Lot 28
Jim Marshall Signed Digital Photograph, "Miles – Green Trumpet"
This photograph of Miles Davis playing his green trumpet was originally shot in 1960 during a performance at the Berkely Community Theater, in Berkely California. That year was a busy one for Davis, with a European tour, recording sessions, and playing gigs all across the United States. One of two images made. Image area: 12 inches x 18 inches.
“I first photographed Miles Davis in 1959, but not too well. I remember after a show in Berkeley California, a little later around 1960, I went up to him backstage and asked why he had a green trumpet. He shot back at me, ‘Motherfucker, do I ask you why you have a black camera?!’ Frightened the shit outta me for the next five years! After I moved to NY in 1962, I did a couple of covers for Miles, live records on Columbia. I went down the first time he played for Bill Graham at Winterland in San Francisco. I had made him a picture of my John Coltrane photo that I had taken in John's garden. Backstage was crazy. He was surrounded by all the media, press, local TV stations and newspapers...it was a real big deal. I saw him and said, ‘Hey Miles’ he sort of grunted and acknowledged my presence. I gave him the print and said, ‘This is for you.’ ‘What is it? I’m busy.’ ‘It’s just something for you.’ ‘I’m busy,' he says again. I walked away and he opens the package. People are all over him, asking questions, bothering him and trying to get to him, he tells them all to shut the fuck up and leave him alone. He’s looking at the print. He loved Coltrane. ‘Hey Marshall, did you take this of John? You knew him like that? Why don't you take pictures of me like this?’ And I said, ‘Why don't you let me?’ After that I could do whatever I wanted with him. He had his moods but we were cool. It was trust. If John trusted me, then so did Miles and with trust I got great shots of him.”
—Jim Marshall Courtesy www.marshallphoto.com
Miles Davis was most famous for being an American jazz trumpet player, and was a recognized leader in developing several genres of jazz music over the course of the 20th-century. His career spanned decades, starting in the mid-1940s after he dropped out of Juillard. Within a few years he was performing with the like of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, and a young Thelonius Monk. Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2006, sold over 4 million copies of his album Kind of Blue, and continues to inspire and entertain with his innovative, groundbreaking music. Miles Davis died September 28, 1991, at the age of 65.
About Jim Marshall:
Jim Marshall was, without question, one of the seminal photographers of the world of rock and roll in the United States during its most fertile and eventful era. He was in the right place at the right time, with the skills, talent, and relentless drive to capture the spirit of the moment. He was born in Chicago in 1936 and he died March 24, 2010 in New York City.
From his beginnings in the Midwest, through his early career in San Francisco, to his mature career in New York, Marshal gave the country a truly American rock outlook. It reflected the region-trumping growth of rock as a social unifying force that gathered all youth in its wake. In the heyday of 1960s rock music in San Francisco, he captured the likes of Mick Jagger, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, Grace Slick, Janis Joplin and the rest of the pantheon of rock and roll royalty. As time passed , he kept photographing these people as well as the emerging figures, adding to the sense of history, continuity, and the breaks and changes that all human life—even rock gods—experience.
Marshall had the ability to capture with his lens the quintessential moments that illuminated the lives of his subjects, the performance behind, even within, the performance. When that split second in time is caught forever, it becomes a document, a record, a testament to the talents of both rocker and photographer. Photography itself is then a performance.
A word from the printer Ctein:
“All these Ultrachrome K3 digital color prints were made between September 2009 and March 2010. Jim didn't sell digital prints before then. I did all Jim's digital printing so I'm confident of how many prints were made. The numbers below include the print I own (e.g., if it says 2 prints, that means there is only one other print out there besides the one I own). Since most of these photos were printed for a show Jim had last fall, it should be assumed that all existing prints were signed.”
“The dimensions indicated are approximate image areas; most have 2 inch or larger white borders all around. Except where noted, the prints are signed by Jim in the lower right margin, but they are not titled on the left, like the dye transfers are. They are signed and dated with the printing date on back in graphite by me.”
“All of the digital work for Jim was done in approximately the last six months of his life, and it was certainly among the very last new work he commissioned. There were only two or three new color photographs I printed for him after this body of work.
“Jim typically did a limited numbered-and-signed edition of 50, but most of the editions did not sell out. Since Jim was a last-minute kinda guy, that means there would be fewer than 50 prints out there-- he rarely had more than two or three prints made at a time, and he usually didn't sign one until he sold it. In many cases, I do not know how many prints were made of a particular photograph. “
About Ctein:
For 35 years Ctein has been a master dye transfer printer. This incredibly complex and difficult process produces by far the finest photographic prints and has been undertaken by only a very small percentage of color printers. Ctein is one of only a handful of printers still using this 70-year-old medium. His results are so impressive that Kodak's own dye transfer experts proclaimed that there was no one alive who produced better color prints than Ctein.
Ctein has printed for such notable photographers as: photojournalist Ken Jarecke, whose famous "Face of War" photograph defined the first Gulf War; music photographer Jim Marshall, whose iconic rock and roll, blues and jazz photographs are well-known to every lover of modern music; and portraitist Bernard Lee Schwartz, whose portraits of everyone from the Pope to Twiggy are in major collections around the world. Ctein prints reside in major academic, governmental, and museum collections around the world - even the Royal Family of Great Britain has prints made by Ctein.
Ctein is also a widely-read author, with well over a million words in print. He literally "wrote the book" for Kodak on many dye transfer printing techniques. Several of today's elite circle of dye transfer printers say they owe their beginnings to Ctein's instruction in that craft. For over a quarter-century, he's had hundreds of articles and columns published in numerous photography and technology magazines. He has written the critically acclaimed books, "Post Exposure: Advanced Techniques for the Photographic Printer" and "Digital Restoration from Start to Finish."
Ctein's technical credentials are equally impressive. His knowledge of computers and digital photography runs wide and deep. Educated at Caltech, Ctein has provided research, testing and consultation to companies such as Apple Computers, Eastman Kodak, and Agfa. He is the ultimate "early adopter" of digital photography and printing, despite his passion for a classic color printing process like dye transfer. He embraced digital photography's potential when most didn't imagine it was possible; he was designing digital cameras in 1971. In 1973 he made the first electronic prints directly from color negatives. In 1974 he was researching electronic photofinishing for a major film manufacturer. In the late 70s he designed sophisticated color printers and displays and consulted for Apple Computers on advanced display technologies.
Today, Ctein offers the most exclusive custom digital printing services, alongside the traditional and time-honored dye transfer prints.
Estimate: $3,000 - $4,000