John Simmons. Photo by Anaith Indjeian
By Steve Simmons – Posted at 7:54 p.m., March 6, 2021
At The Jean Deleage Art Gallery at Casa 0101 theater, the celebration and recognition of Black History Month didn’t end in February. The Boyle Heights gallery is extending its show “Capturing Beauty: The Artwork and Photography of John Simmons” through June 5.
The exhibit, with photos spanning from 1965 in Chicago when Simmons took his first photographs to the present day, with about 24 images and three never-before-exhibited collages, may be viewed anytime at https://casa0101.org/?exhibits=the-artwork-and-photography-of-john-simmons.
The free online guided tour of two-time Emmy-winning cinematographer Simmons’ photos and collages depict racism, segregation and civil unrest. “Since the 1960s, Simmons has produced captivating photographs that present the beauty, complexities, challenges, and intimate moments of Black life and the broader world around him,” says Jimmy Centeno, art exhibit curator. (The website also features Centeno’s interview with Simmons and a webinar feature led by him and Emmanuel Deleage, Casa 0101 executive director.)
Finding His Passion And A Mentor
Simmons has said his earliest memory of photography is from when he was about 7 or 8 years old and a man came to the house to shoot a family portrait. “As he would finish a roll of film, he’d hand it to me to put into its canister. Each roll he handed me came with an explanation. He created a world of magic around the whole process, and I couldn’t wait to see the images.”
In 1965, his best friend Louis Sengstacke’s brother, Bobby Sengstacke, who was about 10 years his senior, became his first mentor. Sengstacke’s family owned The Chicago Daily Defender newspaper – the oldest Black publication in the country, established in 1905. “Bobby was one of the hippest cats I ever knew,” says Simmons. “I wanted to be like Bobby. He was always draped in 35mm Nikon cameras. He would take me into the darkroom, and I’d watch him print. Jazz was always playing.”
Working at the paper at 16, he gained darkroom experience and became Sengstacke’s assistant. Sengstacke took Simmons to the National Negro Black Publishers convention in New York and “loaned me a camera,” recalls Simmons. “When he processed the roll, he was impressed and so was I. He saw my pictures and said, ‘oh my God, you’ve got an eye.’”
He gave Simmons a copy of The Sweet Flypaper of Life by Langston Hughes, with photos by Roy DeCarava and showed him the work of Gordon Parks, Roy Lewis, Billy Abernathy, Henri Cartier-Bresson, James Van Der Zee and many others. “That’s where my love of candid street photography began,” says Simmons. “It seemed that every photographer I admired shot in black and white, so I wanted to,” says Simmons.
An Artist’s Approach
“I fell into photography hard,” says Simmons. “I loved the magic of a darkroom, seeing something develop with chemicals; and I never get tired of it.” But he still believes technique takes a back seat to the story he’s trying to tell.
“Back then you got limited rolls of film so you had to decide if a photo is worth taking,” says Simmons. His photo “Unite or Parish” shows teens walking down the street carrying protest signs like “Blacks Don’t Belong In Vietnam” and “America Is The Black Man’s Battleground.” “When I saw the negative it blew my mind. It’s the only picture of them I took and I really like it. There’s also a wonderful picture of Jesse Jackson in a horse drawn carriage.”
Simmons quotes one of his heroes, photographer Van Der Zee, “he said the most difficult thing is making the camera see what you see and that’s the greatest challenge—telling the truth and creating a narrative. I’m 70 in December and I’m finally beginning to feel what he was talking about.”
He tells of a photo he took of a woman meditating, with the light shining through a window behind her. “When I printed it, it just felt very cliché.”
“You have to feel the soul, that’s the goal, like a musician feeling the beat. Pictures have to live on the wall by themselves. They have to hold their space and say something to the viewer,” says Simmons. “It may say something completely different to me, and I just get to feel it.”
A photograph of a man casually leaning against a threshold with a pistol in his pocket, reflects how comfortable people felt around Simmons, Centeno says. “You can see the connection between photographer and subject that allowed that to happen.”
Becoming A Photographer With Help From More Mentors
Simmons was already working for the paper, on assignment, at 16, “I was going out and taking pictures with my press pass. I was excited to get up and go to work,” says Simmons. He even dropped out of high school. “Bobby would hang out with people like Herbie Hancock, all kind of hip musicians who were around at that time. We traveled all over the country together. We shot civil rights demonstrations in Georgia. I don’t know how many times we drove out to California together.”
Sengstacke put together an exhibit of Simmons’ work and he started getting attention. In 1969, Sengstacke traveled to Nashville for a couple of years to participate in Fisk University’s “artist in residence” program teaching photography and film. He encouraged Simmons to attend night school to earn a high school diploma and transfer to Fisk to take his class. Simmons followed his mentor “and it was off to Fisk– and the camera has navigated my life, and it’s worked out well for me,” Simmons reflects.
“Bobby brought something to Fisk University that was fresh in creating a photography department with David Driskell, professor of art and chairman of the department.” he said.
“I have been fortunate from my earliest days, that my career has been mentored and shaped by many, including film director Carlton Moss.” Moss was invited to guest lecture and teach a class, “The Image of the Black Man in American Cinema,” as a way of bringing cinema to the university. Upon seeing Simmons pictures, he said, “you’re a cinematographer.” “I didn’t even know what that was. He began to nurture me in that direction and even got me a subscription to American Cinematographer magazine,” recalls Simmons.
One day Moss showed up unannounced at Simmons’ apartment in an alley behind a fast-food restaurant with Ousman Sembène, regarded as “the father of African cinema,” and an interpreter. After seeing Simmons’ work, Sembène, said through the interpreter, “You’re a cinematographer.”
In Simmons’ sophomore year, he and Moss made two films, Missing Pages and Two Centuries of African American Art. “I was the cinematographer,” says Simmons.
In 1969, when he was 18, Driskell, then chair of the Fisk University art department “saw my photographs and facilitated me getting two scholarships—one to Fisk and next to USC film school,” where be began his formal studies in cinematography. After USC he worked as a camera technician, shot documentaries, commercials, features and music videos.
In The Right Place To Grab History
Simmons was at the right place in the right time to chronicle the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement and its leaders.
As a student at Fisk, he photographed Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman to run for president. The photo in the show, says Simmons, “generates a kind of sincerity.” His image of activist and feminist Angela Davis, “shows a powerful political figure known for fiery speeches in a more reflective mood. That’s what makes me like that picture.”
One of Centeno’s goals is to balance the exhibit by amplifying the role of women and highlighting their contributions to history and society, which seems appropriate for March as Women’s History Month.
“I knew these were historical moments and I knew I was fortunate,” says Simmons. “Everybody came to Fisk and I was aware I was in a in rich environment. Every time I took a picture, I was grabbing a piece of history.”
During this time, Fisk was a magnet for figures like Eldridge Cleaver, Stokely Carmichael, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and leaders in politics and the arts like sculptors Martin Puryear and Richard Hunt. “Fisk was a cultural epicenter at that time,’ says Simmons. “Mr. D. (Driskell) brought incredible artists to our campus: Romare Bearden, Alma Thomas, Charles White, Walter Williams, Elizabeth Catlett, John T. Scott, Jacob Lawrence, and so many others.”
Simmons also encountered his share of racism. In Macon, Ga., on assignment to cover a civil rights protest, he was hit across the back with a billy club and knocked to the ground by a cop- “I saw stars.” At 16, he was excited to buy his first 50mm Nikon at a store in a Chicago suburb. “My mother told me to go out and put some money in the parking meter about a block away. Then I noticed a police car driving slowing alongside of me. The officer came into the store and asked if everything was okay. The owner said ‘yeah, they’re just buying a camera.’ So yes, I was profiled.”
Putting It Together
Centeno, the gallery’s curator for five years, discovered Simmons’ work when he was asked to write about the show “John Simmons-A Life In Black and White” at the Perfect Exposure Gallery in Los Angeles in 2018. “That’s how we met, and the conversation started,” says Centeno. “I’m fond of Boyle Heights,” says Simmons who once had studio space a block from where the theater is now. “It’s a jewel in the community.”
He asked Simmons to consider a show at Casa 0101 and was even more enthusiastic after seeing the “No Crystal Stair, The Photography Of John Simmons” show at the Museum of African American Art.
“Looking at his vast catalogue of photos,” recalls Centeno, “there were so many themes.” His goal, he says, was to juxtapose the photos of everyday life with illustrations of the era’s changing political scene and rapidly growing Civil Rights Movement.
So there are photos of people enjoying the Bud Billiken Parade, sponsored for more than 90 years by The Chicago Daily Defender, children riding bikes or crossing a street, people going to work, a rag man collecting scraps and tin and members of the Nation of Islam in Nashville, and a photo that reminds people of “The Last Supper” with Rev C.T. Vivian and members of the Blackstone Rangers at a press conference.
“I wanted to show the small moments of life and the dignity of John’s subjects, like a nanny crossing the street with two white children, along with the struggle for equality and justice,” says Centeno, “all taking place at the same time.” His photo of an interracial couple dancing shows the white man “looking like he’s on high alert, wondering where the opposition is going to come from,” says Simmons.
The exhibition’s title was inspired by the book Saving Beauty by cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han “who wrote that beauty is all that which commits you and I,” says Centeno. He relates it to “the commitment of that young photographer to his art, his community, civil rights and life.”
“I’m glad Jimmy wanted the collages in the show,” says Simmons, “they feel like documentaries to me.” “Good People on Both Sides” was inspired by former President Trump’s response to Charlotte ; “Walking Tall In Spite Of It All,” depicts “atrocities that happen to Black people,” says Simmons, and shows Harriet Tubman, who led hundreds of enslaved people to freedom via the Underground Railroad on one side, a man being lynched on the other “and a strong man in the middle in a trench coat” and “Anger Danger—Don’t Shoot” was inspired by the murder of George Floyd.
Emmanuel Deleage adds that the multi-layered paper collage cartographies are “mappings that zoom in and out of political and social narratives, and the harsh reality and struggles of Black American history without losing a sense of hope.”
A Continuing Legacy
Popular now on HBO is the documentary Black Art: In the Absence of Light, inspired by Driskell’s landmark 1976 exhibition, “Two Centuries of Black American Art.” It includes footage of Driskell in the 1970s shot by Carton and Simmons. “It was some of my early work with a movie camera,” says Simmons.
Simmons has served as and is currently serving as VP of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC). He’s presently a Governor of the Cinematographers Peer Group at The Television Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is co-founder and co-chair, along with Cynthia Pusheck, ASC, of the ASC Vision Committee, whose purpose is to help underrepresented cinematographers and expand diversity and inclusiveness on television sets.
Presently Simmons is cinematographer for the Netflix television series, Family Reunion, where in January he made his directing debut on an episode of the show. “With cinematography you’re fulfilling the needs of the project and there are restraints of time and money considerations and negotiations with everyone involved,” says Simmons. “With my still camera there’s no one telling me what to do, there’s total freedom. And with the collages I can use symbolism and abstraction.”
Simmons carries a still camera with him every day. “I never go out intending to shoot,” says Simmons. “My thing is that what I’m supposed to take a picture of sort of crosses my path. There is something necessary in us meeting each other. “
Prints in the exhibit are for sale. For inquiries, call the theater at 323-263-7684, between 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Monday-Friday.
