Milt Hinton, a legendary jazz bassist, made contributions both musical and photographic to that quintessentially American art form. Armed with a camera for most of his 70-year career, Hinton photographed the jazz scene from the 1930s until well after its golden age in the late 1950s. Although he took up photography as a hobby, his images now serve as valuable records of the jazz world from the perspective of one of its most celebrated insiders.

Hinton’s photos include countless jazz luminaries, among them Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, and Louis Armstrong. In addition to photographs of club bookings, concerts, and recording sessions, Hinton’s images show the vibrant jazz community that extended offstage, both in and outside of New York. They exude not only a strong sense of the camaraderie among band members, but also offer evidence of the racial prejudice that often went side by side with jazz in the American South.

The largest exhibition of Hinton’s photography to date, An Insider’s Lens features 99 photographs on loan from the Milton J. Hinton Photographic Collection co-directed by David G. Berger and Holly Maxson. The AMAM exhibition coincides with ongoing collaborations between the Milt Hinton estate and the Oberlin College Library and Conservatory of Music.

The exhibition was curated by Denise Birkhofer and Curatorial Assistant Mallory Cohen ’15.