Hank O'Neal's photostream

Please visit www.hankoneal.com for more images by Hank O'Neal.

As a child in Texas, Hank
O’Neal first experienced
photography when he watched his
father print his World War II
photographs and family portraits
in a kitchen darkroom. A few years
later, in 1952, he won a Brownie
Hawkeye in a drawing at a small
grocery store and began taking and
processing his own pictures. Child
in Spacesuit, 1953, is a product
of those times.
Twenty years later, in 1973,
O’Neal had a better camera, his
first book, The Eddie Condon
Scrapbook of Jazz, was published,
and he had his first modest
photography show, Winona, Texas,
at The Open Mind Gallery, an
appropriately modest establishment
in the soon to blossom Soho
district of New York City. By
then, photography had become a
serious avocation, and during that
period O’Neal formed lasting
friendships and working
relationships with such noted
photographers as Berenice Abbott,
Andre Kertesz, all the living Farm
Security Administration
photographers and many others.
Additionally, he came to know many
dealers, critics, and curators
interested in the art of
photography, particularly Lee
Witkin and those associated with
his gallery, as well as Harry
Lunn. His relationship with The
Witkin Gallery continued until it
ceased operation in 1999, and with
Harry Lunn until his death in
1998.
In 1972, O’Neal met Berenice Abbott and began a working
relationship with her that lasted nineteen years. It was
Abbott who convinced him of the merits of a large format
view camera, suggesting that if he’d buy one, she’d teach
him how to work it. He did and she did, in an abbreviated
thirty-minute session. About the same time, Bert Stern
suggested there was equal merit in medium format cameras
and gave O’Neal a spare Rolleiflex to prove the point. No
lesson was involved.
Now, equipped with a Leica, Nikon, Rolleiflex, and
Deardorff, O’Neal began to take serious photographs. His
visual boundary was provided in a conversation with John
Vachon, who told him, I knew I would only photograph what
pleased or astonished my eye, and in the way I wanted to
see it, and this sounded like a fine philosophy. Abbott
provided the intellectual boundary, when she admonished
O’Neal, saying Don’t take photographs willy-nilly, you have
to have a project. Walker Evans added another point, when
he told O’Neal, It doesn’t count unless you find it
yourself. He paid attention to all three of these fine
artists and for the next three decades followed their
advice, accumulating a large body of work in the process.
O’Neal has constantly discovered subjects he feels to be
visually astonishing, and has integrated them into various
projects. Except for those photographs taken for a specific
assignment or publication, until his major one-man show at
The Witkin Gallery, he elected to keep most of his work
private. Since the Witkin retrospective, he has shown and
published his work with increasing regularity.
Many of O’Neal’s photographs are often work-related,
portraits for LP jackets and CD booklets, documenting
recording sessions, illustrating books or producing
booklets for his music festivals. Since 1971, he has
produced over 200 LPs or CDs for his companies, Chiaroscuro
Records and Hammond Music Enterprises. Since 1983, he and
his partner, Shelley Shier have produced over one hundred
music festivals, through their New York City-based
production company, HOSS, Inc.
Along the way, O’Neal has also published a number of
books and monographs, including the now classic work on the
Farm Security Administration, A Vision Shared – A Portrait
of America and Its People 1935 – 1943 and the landmark
study of his friend, Berenice Abbott – American
Photographer. His own photographs appeared in a variety of
books and publications, most recently in 1997 in the award-
winning book, The Ghosts of Harlem and Hank O’Neal
Portraits 1971 - 2000. One of his more unusual
accomplishments was producing a series of photographs that
accompanied a special Limited Editions Club edition of
Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. A special
portfolio of these gravure prints was issued along with the
book.
O’Neal has produced a wide ranging body of work,
portraits of friends and associates, ironic images from
many parts of the world, and continually added to projects
that have lasted two or three decades. Examples of his work
may be seen at hankonealphoto.com.
In addition to the musical and photographic interests,
O’Neal’s other activities are as varied as the subject
matter of his photographs. He received a BA from Syracuse
University in 1962, and was well on his way to an MA, when,
in 1963, he was snared by the Central Intelligence Agency,
with whom he was associated until 1976. While he was with
this organization, he also served on active duty in the US
Army, rising to the rank of Captain.
O’Neal came to New York City from Washington, D.C. in
1967 and still resides in Greenwich Village. He joined the
faculty of The New School University in 1970 and remains
affiliated with that school as Chair of the Board of
Advisors of the Jazz and Contemporary Music Program. For
the decade of the 1970s, he was associated with the modern
dance company, Choreographer’s Theater, for whom he not
only created sound and visual collages, but also, on
occasion, danced. In the same decade, he built and operated
two recording studios in Greenwich Village. During the
years 1983 through 1995, he was an advisor to the Justice
Department and is currently on the Board of Directors of
various arts organizations, galleries and corporations,
most prominently the Jazz Foundation of America/Jazz
Musician’s Emergency Fund and The Jazz Gallery.