The Creative Coalition will host an exclusive one-night-only sneak preview of my portraits of performing artists from the entertainment industry with an exhibit of the ‘Art & Soul’ project in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress on April 29th. ‘Art & Soul’ is the cornerstone of The Creative Coalition’s arts advocacy campaign to focus national attention on the need to secure federal funding and support for the arts.
Entertainment for the evening’s star-studded event will be The Creative Coalition’s one-night show by the same name, ‘Art & Soul’. The show, written and produced by multiple Emmy Award-winning producer Tom Fontana (Oz, Homicide: Life on Street) starring Co-Presidents of The Creative Coalition, Tim Daly (Private Practice) and Dana Delany (Desperate Housewives); directors Barry Levinson (Rain Man) and Spike Lee (Do The Right Thing); actors Adrian Grenier (Entourage), Omar Epps (House); Marlon Wayans (White Chicks, Scary Movie), Ashley Greene (Twilight), Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm); Steven Weber (Brothers & Sisters); Wendie Malick (Confessions of a Shopaholic, Just Shoot Me); Richard Schiff (The West Wing), CCH Pounder (Avatar) and legendary news anchor Morley Safer (60 Minutes) among others to be announced.
The portraits of artists including Anne Hathaway, Samuel Jackson, Alyssa Milano, Zooey Deschanel, Tony Bennett and Kerry Washington are accompanied by handwritten personal testimonials from each individual, expressing the positive impact art has had on their lives which will appear in a book to be published by Filipacchi Publishing, the book division of HFM U.S. The exhibition is sponsored by Sony and Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. and it will showcase 20 photographs from the project printed by Duggal Visual Solutions.
“We are proud to enlist the members of The Creative Coalition to bring arts to the top of the American agenda,” said The Creative Coalition Executive Director Robin Bronk. “Art & Soul is The Creative Coalition’s initiative that brings together today’s greatest artistic voices and storytellers to illuminate the importance – to every American — of support for the arts and efficacy of arts in education.”
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by Brian Smith on February 16, 2010
in Art & Soul,Blogs,Brian Smith,Celebrity Photography,Celebrity Portrait Photography,Film,Inspiration,Miami Photographer,Organizations,The Creative Coalition,briansmith.com
Thanks to Production Paradise for Spotlighting the Art & Soul Project. It’s been a great project to be able to work with The Creative Coalition and all the artists to show support for funding the arts and arts education. Thanks of all to all the celebrities including Samuel Jackson, Anne Hathaway, Adrian Grenier, Taraji P. Henson, Dule Hill, Tichina Arnold, Tony Bennett, Alyssa Milano, David Hyde Pierce, Tim Daly, Lynn Whitfield, Harry Belafonte, Richard Belzer, Robert Davi and Tamala Jones….for lending their voices to this great cause and their wonderful faces to my camera!
If you have checked out Production Paradise, take a look…they’re the directory and showcase for the visual media industry.
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Tony Bennett
We’re in New York, shooting more celebrities for The Creative Coalition’s book “Art & Soul” which will be distributed to President Obama and Congress this May. Assignments this good are really rare. Even though I’ve been l blessed with more than my share of unbelievable assignments in my career, shooting portraits of so many Oscar winners, Tony winners, Grammy winners and Emmy winners was about as cool gig as I can imagine.
Photographing Anne Hathaway is the sort of experience that can hardly be topped, except of course when Anne showed up at our shoot with a box of her favorite cupcakes for our crew. Thanks Annie for being even sweeter than I’d imagined. Thanks also to Anne’s hair stylist Ted Gibson. Not only is Ted one of the top stylists in the country, but he knows how to work a wind machine…
After that we headed uptown to Tony Bennett’s Central Park apartment where we talked about what the arts has meant to him, both as a singer and as an artist. Tony credits Frank Sinatra for giving his career a big break. As a way of giving back Tony founded the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in his hometown of Astoria, Queens.
In the end we shot over 9,000 images and 350 gigs of RAW data without a single slowdown or problem. During the shoots, the artists in this book and I rarely spoke of fame, fortune or fabulous performances. We spoke about their childhoods and what led them to where they are today. Regardless of whether they grew up in small towns and large cities, rich or poor, their lives were all shaped and influenced by the arts and the artists who influenced their careers.
My thanks go out to Ted Okada, Steve Sommers, Phil Lubell, Kristen Elder and Mark Weir of Sony for their support of this project, Kayla Lindquist, director of Sony Artisan’s of Imagery program, Jeffrey Roberts of American PHOTO, Al Silvestri, Alissa Reynolds and Anna Martin of Hachette Filipacchi Media, Eileen Gittins of Blurb, and special thanks to Robin Bronk and Barbara Horvath of The Creative Coalition.
EQUIPMENT:
Sony a900 Cameras
Sony Zeiss 24-70/2.8 Zoom
Sony Zeiss 85/1.4
Sony Zeiss 16-35/2.8 Zoom
Profoto 7A 2400 Packs
Profoto 7 Heads
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