I not there movie
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By: Thorsten Overgaard. May 24, 2014. Latest edited March 22, 2023.
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It almost didn't happen. I had spoken with the wife of Don Hunstein about coming by and photographing him. It wasn't that easy though it was just a 5 minute drive away.
I had told Don and his wife DeeAnne that I would like to come by and "preserve Don Hunstein", because after all that was what his thirty year career had been about:
In 1955 a manager at Columbia Records had wanted what went on in the recording studios at 30th and 52nd Street be photographed and preserved, because it was "history in the making". It became Don Hunstein who got the task of being the house photographer.
And boy was that Columbia Records manager right!
Don Hunstein in his apartment by Central Park in New York, with his book Keeping Time on the table and one of the Bob Dylan Freewhelin' images in the background. Leica M 240 with Leica 50mm Noctilux-M ASPH f/0.95.
Don Hunstein started photographing the the new and upcoming musicians that you
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It’s arguably one of the most iconic album covers of all time, certainly in the folk and pop world: a young Bob Dylan, on the cusp of stardom, walks down a slushy street in Greenwich Village in New York City, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched against the cold, as his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, clings to his left arm.
That image, from the 1963 disc “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” came out of a session that Don Hunstein, a longtime director of photography for Columbia Records, had staged with Dylan in the singer’s nearby apartment, capturing the rising folk star as he played his acoustic guitar, sprawled in a beat-up armchair, and tried at one point to smoke and sing at the same time — another memorable shot.
Those are just two of hundreds of impressive images that are now preserved on a website dedicated to Hunstein’s work, a site put together by Hunstein’s daughter, Tina Cornell, who lives in Florence with her family, and cdeVision, a Holyoke web studio specializing in advertising, website design and more.
Along with taking many shots of Dylan in his early career, Hunstein
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Don Hunstein United States, b. 1928
Don Hunstein grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and attended Washington University, graduating in 1950 with a degree in English. After college he enlisted in the US Air Force and was stationed in Fairford, England where he was assigned a desk job. It was this assignment that allowed him to travel around Europe. He began photographing casually, taking pictures to send home to his family. As time went on, combined with the help of a Leica M3 and inspiration from Henri Cartier Bresson’s books, his hobby began to take him on a lifelong journey. After a year in Fairford, Hunstein was transferred to a base outside of London. There, he joined a local camera club and took evening classes at London’s Central School of Art and Design, and grew influenced by the artists and designers whom he met there.
Hunstein’s iconic photographs have become symbols of an era. In the history of music photography, Hunstein’s work during his 30 years at Columbia records is unsurpassed in its scope and breadth. Throug
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