New Orleans, LA. (Top40 Charts/ Robert Bruno Gallery) - New Orleans Award-winning Photographer Steven Forster has announced that he will unveil the exhibition of his legends series of jazz and musical giants including
Ella Fitzgerald at the Robert Bruno Gallery in New Orleans for the month of November 2007.
The First Lady of Song Ella Fitzgerald will be among many giants Forster photographed in New Orleans including Fats Domino, Queen Latifah, The Count Basie Orchestra, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, B.B. King, Liza Minnelli, Placido Domingo, Miss Nancy Wilson, The Legendary "Q" Quincy Jones, Shirley Horn, Carol Channing, Irma Thomas, Dr. John, Mavis Staples, Al Hirt, Wynton Marsalis, Ellis Marsalis, Dionne Warwick, Chaka Khan, Linda Ronstadt, Aaron Neville, Ethel Merman, Dianne Reeves, Al Hirt, Antoinette K'Doe, Ernie K'Doe, Buddy Guy, Chris Owens, Irvin Mayfield, Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews, Kermit Ruffins and many more. The new exhibition was inspired by Forster's life long infatuation with the voice of Ella Fitzgerald. "She inspired me artistically and musically and has always been a part of my life," Forster says.
Forster photographed Fitzgerald and a few years later delivered a framed photograph to his idol during her stay at New Orleans Fairmont Hotel where she was performing at the Blue Room. A sleepy Fitzgerald, clad in a robe, greeted him at her hotel suite door.
Forster's photography work is included in the Permanent Historic New Orleans Collection, The Permanent Collection of The New Orleans Museum of Art, The Permanent Collection of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, The Contemporary Arts Center, The World Financial Center Winter Garden in New York City, The Robert Bruno Gallery, Farrington-Smith Gallery, The Academy Gallery, The Big Top Art Gallery, The Mario Villa Gallery in New Orleans and Chicago and the John Stinson Fine Arts Gallery. His work has been included in exhibitions of master photographers Ansel Adams, Walker Evans, Clarence John Laughlin, and Weegee, as well as exhibitions with Yoko Ono, LeRoy Neiman, Peter Max and Tony Bennett. His clients have included Random House Books for the cover jacket photograph of Pulitzer Prize winning author Rick Bragg (No 1 New York Times Best Seller, I Am A Soldier, Too; The Jessica Lynch Story), and the cover jacket photograph of the great writer Ernest Gaines for "Mozart and Leadbelly: Stories and Essays".
Forster swept the Fashion Photography category for both published and non-published work at the annual Alpha Awards presented by the Fashion Group International (founded in 1930) of New Orleans in 2004 and still remains the holder of First, Second and Third Place from the Alpha Awards presented by the Fashion Group International of New Orleans in the Fashion Photography category. Forster shut out all other published and non-published fashion photographers from the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama and the Florida panhandle for his fashion and jazz work. Forster is now an eight-time Alpha Award winning photographer whose work is featured in his own award-winning newspaper page, the "Big Easy Page" in the Sunday editions of the Times-Picayune, Louisiana s largest newspaper as well as his monthly fashion column My Way in the Times-Picayune WISH Magazine.
For more information contact [email protected]. ROBERT BRUNO GALLERY is in the Warehouse Arts District of New Orleans, 900 S. Peters St., New Orleans, La. 70130, tel: (504) 495 8287.
Dates: November 3rd thru November 30. Thursday - Saturday from 12-5pm and by appointment; event premiere party, Sat November 3rd, 6-9pm. Free and open to the public.
Steven Forster is a "Poet of Photography" Gary Ian Figaro Newspaper
Steven Forster's photographs are "Big and Beautiful".
PBS' art critic John Kemp on Steven Forster's Jazz Legends exhibition.
"Steven Forster is, of course, the ubiquitous Times-Picayune photographer, the eye behind all those chablis-tinged grins on the New Orleans' Times-Picayune Sunday Big Easy Page'. and Forster's monumental one-of-a-kind 4x6 foot color jams on the New Orleans Jazz Lifestyle' capture the high spirited mise-en-scene of the musical lifestyle" - D. Eric Bookhardt, Gambit Weekly.
"Steven Forster's heroically enlarged print of Ernie K-Doe"
on the 6ftx4ft color photograph of Forster's Antoinette and Ernie K-Doe's Wedding. - Doug MacCash art critic Times-Picayune Newspaper
"This exhibition will unveil Steven Forster's legends series of jazz and musical giants including Ella Fitzgerald, who will be among many giants including Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, B.B. King, Nancy Wilson, Pete Fountain and many more. This exhibition was inspired by Forster s life long infatuation with the voice of Ella Fitzgerald. "She inspired me artistically and musically and has always been a part of my life" Forster says. He photographed her on stage in 1979 at the 10th New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Forster believed the negatives of his Fitzgerald shoot had been destroyed in a fire 25 years ago. In October Forster discovered a set of some of the negatives in an envelope. His joy at discovering them propelled him into action, he matched images of other musical greats he had photographed over the years, and his latest one-man show was born."
Vision America by Sara Namias
ZOOM International Magazine
"Like most in the (New Orleans) metro area Forster's losses following the storms were devastating. He lost the majority of his files, as the second story of his apartment complex caved into the first floor, with mold and water everywhere, his spirit could have easily been broken but he like many others, found strength to move forward...Forster found a new beginning and it is his hope that others will too.
NPR's Diane Mack
in an interview with Steven Forster after Hurricane Katrina
