MICHELLE VIGNES 'Beverly Playing the Blues' Photo - SF Bay Area Blues Book COVER

Description

ORIGINAL 1984 MICHELLE VIGNES (1926-2012) 'BEVERLY STOVALL PLAYS THE BLUES' SIGNED GELATIN SILVER PHOTOGRAPH USED FOR THE COVER OF "BAY AREA BLUES" BOOK
This is a great piece. I have been buying a lot of contemporary photography lately as the market seems to be really on the move.  Photography has finally been recognized as a form of fine art and I think the many of the works I am offering have both fine art and historical significance.  This is a wonderful original photographer by important photographer Michelle Vignes.  For those not familiar with the artist, I have included her biography below.  This is probably one of her most famous photographs as it was used for the cover of "Bay Area Blues", the book that documents the history of San Francisco's Blues scene.  I have included an image of the book for you to see - the book is not included in this auction.  The photograph is an outstanding original printing.  Image measures 9 x 11 1/2 inches on sheet measuring 11 x 14 inches.  Perfect as printed condition.  Signed, dated 1984 and titled on the back.  Photograph is archival held at the corners into archival backing and matte with a simple black frame.  Really just a great presentation of this wonderful important photograph.  Frame measures 15 1/2 x 18 inches.  FREE SHIPPING ANYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES!
For those not familiar with the artist, her biography from a gallery that sells her works reads: "
Born in France in 1926, Michelle Vignes is a documentary photographer and photojournalist who lives in San Francisco.
Vignes, whose archives were acquired by UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library three years ago (her Black Panther pictures went to Stanford) has documented the cultural and political changes that swept the country in the 1960s and '70s. She settled in San Francisco in '65 and began photographing the underground rock scene, draft-card burnings and the Indian occupation of Alcatraz. She covered the American Indian Movement over the next 20 years. Her photos appeared in Time, Life, Vogue, Ramparts and Newsweek, as well as in French publications. Vignes brought a fresh European eye to Wyoming truck stops, and later, as an American citizen, photographed the concierges of Parisian apartment houses with "a foreign eye,'' as she puts it.
Vignes, who hated school and never got a degree, left home as soon as she could and moved to Paris. She took a temp job at Magnum Photos and began working with Cartier-Bresson and other noted Magnum photographers like Robert Capa. She already knew Cartier-Bresson's work, which "to me is a natural way of seeing,'' she says. "I learned a lot by looking at a lot of pictures.''
Before long, Vignes became a photo editor. She worked closely with Cartier-Bresson, becoming such a trusted aide that he asked her to check the quality of his prints. "I had no clue how to print, but I knew what tonality he liked," Vignes says. She didn't start taking photos professionally until she quit a public relations job in the photo department at the United Nations in New York and moved here. "I had loved San Francisco, and thought, 'That's the place where I want to live and take pictures,' '' says Vignes, who's recovering from a series of maladies that have slowed her down but not cooled her passion for life and work. She photographed rock impresario Bill Graham at the Fillmore Auditorium, Allen Ginsberg at the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park, and other hippie gatherings. "I was more of an observer,'' Vignes says. "The rock thing and the hippies, it was never my thing. I thought it was such a naive scene.'' She was much more involved in the American Indian pride movement, making trips to Alcatraz Island when it was occupied by Indians from 1969 to 1971. She later went to Wounded Knee in South Dakota to photograph the Indian occupation there and became friends with American Indian Movement co-founder Dennis Banks.
The Indians on Alcatraz, she says, "resented white people, and I was careful not to intrude too much.'' At Wounded Knee, "my aim was to show what it is to be under siege, surrounded by the Army,'' Vignes says. Most pictures from Wounded Knee showed an Indian with a gun, she adds.
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