Robert J. Brand, Jazz Photographs, Downstairs Gallery at the Plastic Club

The Downstairs Gallery at the Plastic Club usually hosts a group art show, April, Jazz Month, is exhibiting a collection of photographs by Robert J. Brand. DoN asked Bob about the photographs in the one-person show?  “The show is photos of jazz musicians in performance and I’m not selling anything.  I’m giving away work to friends and my friends all support Obama for President.  So, they write a check to Obama for President, then I give them a piece of art.”

Robert J. Brand, Jazz Photographs, Downstairs Gallery at the Plastic Club

DoN noticed that the prices are, shall we say?  Affordable.  “Well, we’re not going to win this election with the Koch Brothers.  It’s going to require people giving money, making phone calls, ringing doorbells, walking streets and turning out the vote.  So, making the art affordable is part of getting people involved. Sometime during April, I have a portfolio of twenty-two pictures that I took in Mississippi in 1966.  The portfolio is titled It’s Always Been About Voting. And it’s a limited edition, forty boxed sets and all the money from that will go to groups that are fighting for the right to vote.  The money’s going against all the anti-voting actions of state governments around the country.”

Robert J. Brand, Jazz Photographs, Downstairs Gallery at the Plastic Club

DoN asked Robert J. Brand when he began taking pictures?  “I got my first camera in 1963, around Thanksgiving when I had just started college.”  Are you shooting digitally now?  “I have gone digital but some of the pictures in this show are silver bromide images but everything I do now is digital and we’re digitizing as fast as we can. The 1966 pieces have all been  digitized. In 1965 and 66, I was in Mississippi several times, the pictures in the portfolio all came from the James Meredith march.  He set out to march against fear to show people they could register to vote and he was shot the first day of the march.”

“And ten thousand people came from around the United States to finish the march.  And, we did.  Before that we worked on what became the first integrated Head Start Program in Mississippi which we physically built over Christmas and New Years of ’65, ’66…I guess I was twenty years old, there were over ten thousand people there.”

Plastic Club Art Studio and Gallery, 247 South Camac Street, Philadelphia PA, 19107  215-545-9324

Written and photographed by DoN Brewer

Read more about Jazz Show at The Plastic Club at Side Arts Philadelphia Art Blog