Photographs by John Simmons, ASC On View
The cinematographer’s still photographs and other artwork are featured at Getty Museum and Casa 0101.
John Simmons, ASC has a prolific career as both a cinematographer and still photographer, and he recently shared his photographs, their stories and inspirations with the Getty Museum. Simmons’ work was featured in the Getty’s “Art Stories,” which offer perspectives on artists and their work. In a Q&A with the Getty’s digital producer Thuy Bui, titled “A Photograph Has to Be Like Music,” Simmons was asked “about his lifelong investment in Black visibility and his early days of capturing everyday moments on the streets of Chicago.”
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John Simmons began taking photographs as a teenager in 1965, the same year the Voting Rights Act was passed, guaranteeing all Black Americans the right to vote.
His current exhibition, Capturing Beauty, assembles photos and artworks featuring notable figures in the civil rights movement and more everyday moments of life.
Simmons, a cinematographer, painter and photographer, said when he first started out, there weren t that many positive images of Black people and publications unless you were looking at Jet magazine, or Ebony Magazine, or the Chicago Defender newspaper and the other black publications of the country.
Asked about one image in the collection of a little girl eating ice cream, taken in 1967, Simmons said: