Enid Farber, New York City
Member Since January 2007
Artist Statement Enid Farber has been photographing musicians since 1979. A "self-taught" photographer who began documenting the world of music in Atlanta, Farber currently resides in New York City where she continues to focus primarily on recording the evolving history of the jazz and world music scene for publications and record companies. Farber has been the main New York photographer for Jazziz Magazine since 1996. In the January 2003 20th anniversary issue Jazziz,
said, "If we were to identify a JAZZIZ visual historian, her name would no doubt be Enid Farber. For longer than a decade, her photography has taken readers on an odyssey, to experience the most adventurous music and to meet the most interesting personalities, from both the new and traditional worlds of jazz."
Other publications where Farber's work has appeared are Downbeat, The Village Voice, The New York Times, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, Musician, JazzTimes, Women Who Rock, Town and Country, People, Psychology Today, Icon, Vibe Magazine; U.K.'s Independente, Japan's Swing Journal, Italy's Musica Jazz, Germany's Rolling Stone, France's Afrique Magazine, and many other foreign and domestic publications, books and record covers. Farber's work has been exhibited in several solo and group shows since moving
to New York in 1985, including the Weill Gallery at the 92nd Street "Y". WBGO FM's Gallery in Newark, NJ, The Corporate Headquarters of Con Edison in Brooklyn, NY (a special commission), David Ryan's Salon, The Jazz Gallery, La Chapelle Gallery and The Cloister's. Other exhibitions include The Cankarjev Dom in Ljubljana, Slovenia, The Blink Gallery in Newport, R.I. and The Boone County National Bank in Columbia, Missouri, Hudson Guild Gallery, NYC. Her work was also featured in the United States Information Agency's traveling exhibit of jazz performers in cultural embassies and libraries worldwide as well as the first major Latin Jazz exhibition at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC. in the fall of 2003. Farber's photos of Dizzy Gillespie, Sun Ra, Clifford Jordan, and Mario Bauza were featured on Life Remembers in 1993, the TNT documentary produced in conjunction with Life Magazine about great and notable people who died that year. Farber and her work were featured in Jazztimes Magazine's December 1997 "Classic Jazz Photography" issue as one of the masters of jazz photography. She was the sole female of four names mentioned in the New York Times in May 1997 as "one of the young generation of talented photographers documenting the current jazz scene". Farber was nominated four times in 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002 by the Jazz Journalist's Association for Excellence in Jazz Photography" winning in 2002 as well as for "Best Photo of the Year". Farber was featured in the September 2000 issue of Photo Insider Magazine. The December 2001 issue of Jazziz Magazine featured a 12 page photo essay entitled, "Legends Who Have Passed Thru My Lens" based on an exhibition of the work. Some of Farber's classic jazz images were selected for noted filmmaker Ken Burns' historic 20 hour documentary on jazz aired on PBS in January 2001 and companion book. In the book, Bums acknowledges Farber, the sole female amongst 14 legendary male photographers, as "an extraordinary group of the finest jazz art photographers in the country".
In summarizing her work, Farber said, "The camera is my instrument. In the best way that I can, I pay tribute to the musical artist, translating my love for the sounds they create into a photographic image which enables me to relive the experience long after the event. This way I have also been allowed to participate and vicariously. I too can play the music."
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