Spielman was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and graduated from Tulsa Central High School. He then attended and graduated from Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri.
Spielman’s interest in photography began at the age of 15.[1] When he looked through a camera, his blood pressure dropped and pulse slowed, he knew at the instant he wanted to be a photographer. While Spielman was attending Westminster College, a bombed out Christopher Wren Church from London was transported to Fulton and reconstructed on Westminster’s campus. Honoring Winston Churchill’s visit and speech in which he coined the phrase “iron curtain.”[2] Most of Spielman’s senior was spent in Vienna and traveling Europe studying art history. He credits this experience as a turning point helping him understand and appreciate composition and design.[1]
Photography career
Southern WritersKatrinaville Chronicles
After graduation Spielman moved south to New Orleans to start his photographic career. He has never been employed as a staffer or photographer of record, but rather has always been a freelance photographer. With projects around the world, he work has taken him to France, England, Ireland, Russia, Egypt, Pakistan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Central America and other locations. From world leaders, corporate reports and personal projects his traveling has been constant and extensive.[3] His images have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including The Times, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, Forbes, and Architectural Digest.[4]
David Spielman received the Chevalier (Knight) of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture in 2020. This lifetime distinction is awarded to those who have contributed significantly to furthering the arts in France and throughout the world. Vincent Sciama, the Consul General of France, declared “Awarding this prestigious distinction to David Spielman is not only recognizing his extraordinary talent as a photographer, but also his love for and connection to France alongside his role as a vibrant member of the artistic life of New Orleans.”[5]
Spielman's work has been featured in five books:
Southern Writers,[6] has 72 portraits of Southern authors; including Eudora Welty, Pat Conroy, Richard Ford, James Dickey, Ernest Gaines, Shelby Foote, Anne Rice and many others. Working quickly Spielman usually shoots in a comfortable and relaxed location insuring a pleasant and revealing portrait.[7]
New Orleans Musicians: When Not Performing,[8] is a collection of portraits of 71 musicians when not on stage. Each was asked where they wanted to be photographed, which offers the viewer a glimpse into their lives. The book includes Dr. John, Pete Fountain, Harry Connick, Frogman Henry, Fats Domino, Irma Thomas, Allen Toussaint and more. As he did in his Southern Writers book Spielman works quickly, usually one on one, as he feels more people there causes distractions for the subject. Therefore, allowing an intimate and personal exchange between the subject and photographer.
Katrinaville Chronicles[9] is Spielman's start to a long-term photographic essay about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. Not being a “hard news” guy, his approach was that of an observer trying to document what happened to his city, New Orleans. Working slowly and very deliberately he traversed the city searching for images that would tell a story. Spielman always attempts to render the best possible image leaving his biases out of the way. This book also includes his e-mails to family and friends. Never thinking that his words and observations would be part of a book. It was just his first person account of what he was seeing and feeling after the storm when the city was almost void of people. He modeled his work after that of the wonderful photographers who documented the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. This was his WPA; the only difference was there was no government funding, no editors to help tell them where to go. He was on his own, shooting and funding his work without any outside help.
The Katrina Decade[10] is a book and major exhibition with the Historic New Orleans Collection, documenting the ten years after Hurricane Katrina. Spielman continued to photograph New Orleans post storm, documenting areas and neighborhoods that may be missed by someone less familiar with New Orleans. With much rebuilding in progress, the recovery didn’t reach and include everyone and every place. The book shows houses completely vine-covered and structures stripped of any and all valuable architectural details. A melancholy beauty with a haunting air overtook many parts of the city. The Historic New Orleans Collected hosted a major tenth-anniversary show of Spielman’s Katrina work.[11]
Gallery and museum showcases
Spielman’s work continues to be collected throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. The Historic New Orleans Collection and the Ogden Museum of the South both have many of his images in their permanent collections. He also continues to give lectures, talks and workshops about all of his work. Spielman maintains a gallery in the historic Garden District, where his photos can be viewed year around.
Publications
The KatrinaDecade: Images of an Altered City published by the Historic New Orleans Collection 2015
New Orleans Musicians: When Not Performing published by Pelican Publishing Company 2012
Katrinaville Chronicles, published by LSU Press 2007
The French Quarter, also known as the Vieux Carré, is the oldest neighborhood in the city of New Orleans. After New Orleans was founded in 1718 by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville, the city developed around the Vieux Carré, a central square. The district is more commonly called the French Quarter today, or simply "The Quarter," related to changes in the city with American immigration after the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Most of the extant historic buildings were constructed either in the late 18th century, during the city's period of Spanish rule, or were built during the first half of the 19th century, after U.S. annexation and statehood.
Mathew B. Brady was one of the earliest photographers in American history. Best known for his scenes of the Civil War, he studied under inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, who pioneered the daguerreotype technique in America. Brady opened his own studio in New York in 1844, and photographed Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and Abraham Lincoln, among other public figures.
The American Civil War was the most widely covered conflict of the 19th century. The images would provide posterity with a comprehensive visual record of the war and its leading figures, and make a powerful impression on the populace. Something not generally known by the public is the fact that roughly 70% of the war's documentary photography was captured by the twin lenses of a stereo camera. The American Civil War was the first war in history whose intimate reality would be brought home to the public, not only in newspaper depictions, album cards and cartes-de-visite, but in a popular new 3D format called a "stereograph," "stereocard" or "stereoview." Millions of these cards were produced and purchased by a public eager to experience the nature of warfare in a whole new way.
The George Eastman Museum, the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in Rochester, New York.
Herman Leonard was an American photographer known for his unique images of jazz icons.
Robert Polidori is a Canadian-American photographer known for his large-scale color images of architecture, urban environments and interiors. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Martin-Gropius-Bau museum (Berlin), and Instituto Moreira Salles. His photographs are also included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, J. Paul Getty Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Château de Versailles, Centre Pompidou (Paris), and Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris), as well as many private collections.
Frank Stefanko is a fine art photographer with connections to New Jersey performers Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen. Stefanko's early photographs, taken in the 1960s through the 1980s, reveal the emerging careers of the two young artists. Frank retains an ongoing working relationship with both Springsteen and Smith. A limited edition book was released in November 2017, entitled Bruce Springsteen: Further Up the Road. The book chronicles the 40-year working relationship between Stefanko and Bruce Springsteen. It contains personal stories and hundreds of Frank's photos from the 1960s to 2017, many never before seen.
St. Patrick's Church is a Catholic church and parish in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. The parish was founded in 1833, and the current structure was completed in 1840. It is the second-oldest parish in New Orleans, located upriver from the French Quarter at 724 Camp Street in what is now the Central Business District. The building, a National Historic Landmark, is one of the nation's earliest and finest examples of Gothic Revival architecture.
The Historic New Orleans Collection (THNOC) is a museum, research center, and publisher dedicated to the study and preservation of the history and culture of New Orleans and the Gulf South region of the United States. It is located in New Orleans' French Quarter. The institution was established in 1966 by General and Mrs. L. Kemper Williams to keep their collection of Louisiana materials intact and available for research and exhibition to the public.
Skip Bolen is a Southern photographer of musicians, architecture, lifestyle and the culture of New Orleans. Born in Lafayette, Louisiana, he moved to New Orleans where he began his publishing career as a designer and art director. After moving to New York City, he began working at House & Garden, renamed HG, as Senior Designer in January 1988 with Anna Wintour and Alexander Liberman at Condé Nast Publications. Spending evenings in jazz clubs, he began photographing jazz musicians in New York City and often when he regularly returned to New Orleans. After three years at Condé Nast Publications in New York City, he returned to New Orleans to pursue his jazz photography full-time. In 1998, he moved to Los Angeles where he became art director of House of Blues for seven years while photographing at night and weekends. He continued photographing jazz musicians and had his first major solo exhibition at the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles on August 9, 2002. On July 4, 2006, he returned to New Orleans to pursue photography full-time documenting the recovery and rebuilding of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina, documenting the jazz scene, night-time photography and other photographic projects.
Earl Barthé was an American plasterer and plastering historian. A self-described "Creole of Color", Barthé is particularly admired for preserving many of the old plaster walls and ornamental cornices for historic structures within New Orleans. His family company specializes in historical and decorative plasterwork and the Barthé family has been plastering since 1850.
Clayton James Cubitt, also known as Siege, is an American photographer, filmmaker and writer living in Brooklyn. He is known for applying an "arrestingly controlled and sleek sense of style" to art, portrait, erotic and fashion photography. He has been described as "one of a new breed of photographers no longer content to draw a distinction between the worlds of fashion, art, and porn."
Gary Mark Smith is an American street photographer. Smith is noted for his pioneering global range and his empathetic and literal style of photography sometimes captured in extremely hazardous circumstances.
William (Kross) Greiner in New Orleans, Louisiana is an American photographer and painter, now living in Fort Worth, TX.
Frank Relle is an American photographer who lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick are American photographers from New Orleans, Louisiana. Calhoun moved to Los Angeles during his teenage years, where he attended Los Angeles Community College, working at KCET public radio station before returning to New Orleans to open a portrait studio.
The Southwestern Christian Advocate (1877–1929) was a widely distributed newspaper for the African American community in the Southern United States. Like the Christian Advocate published in New York City, the publication targeted a Methodist audience. It was printed in New Orleans, Louisiana. It featured a "Lost Friends" section for people searching for loved ones lost to slavery.
The Norman Studio in photography refers to the family business run principally by photographers Henry C. Norman (1850—1913) and his son Earl Norman (1888—1951) in Natchez, Mississippi between 1876 and 1951, which produced around 75,000 images documenting many significant types of events and subjects in the various small towns along the lower Mississippi River. Its output remains one of the most valuable and comprehensive visual collections documenting Southern American life during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Joshua Mann Pailet is a dealer and collector of fine-art photography, a documentary photographer, and the proprietor of A Gallery for Fine Photography in New Orleans, Louisiana. As a photographer, Pailet documents once-in-a-lifetime events such as the 1976 American Freedom Train, the 1984 World's Fair and the aftermath and devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. He opened A Gallery for Fine Photography in 1973, making it one of the first art galleries to be devoted solely to fine-art photography.
Leland Kent is an American photographer known for photographing abandoned and forgotten places across the Southeast. He has published five photography books: Abandoned Birmingham, Abandoned Georgia: Exploring the Peach State, Abandoned Georgia: Traveling the Backroads, Abandoned New Orleans, and ‘’Abandoned North Florida’’.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
