Clint, Charlotte, and Oliver, Big Bear, CA, 1998 (Photo – Paul Jasmin)
Ex-students and colleagues of Paul “Jazz” Jasmin, photographer and teacher at ArtCenter, sent tributes of love and congratulations via Zoom on Friday, December 4.
By Garrett Rowlan
Born in Helena, Montana 85 years ago, Jasmin left Montana in 1954. He took a circuitous journey to Los Angeles by way of Paris, Morocco and New York. His career path also was circuitous: illustrator, painter, actor and finally fashion and art photographer for 50 years and teacher at the ArtCenter College of Design for the last 25 years.
The event recognized Jazz for his work and for inspiring many visual storytellers through his teaching. Over a dozen people speaking at the virtual event evidenced Jasmin’s broad influence. Photographers, writers, collectors, and fellow teachers all acknowledged the effect Jasmin had on their lives and careers.
Among the notables were film director Sofia Coppola. Zooming from Belize, she told Jasmin he was “so important to me.” It was Jasmin, she added, who led her to “ditch painting and take photography.” Legendary photographer and director Bruce Weber called Jasmin “a great inspiration.” Weber said Jasmin is a Montana kid of talent without pretentions: “He’s just like his photos.” Writer Andrew Hurvitz said Jasmin’s pictures reinvented LA for him; they “made the city wonderous again.”
Appearing in countless media, including three books, Jasmin’s work captures LA’s subculture of famous and almost famous drifters and dreamers. “I tell my students,” Jasmin said, “you have to make the person you’re photographing fall in love with you for the moment you’re taking the picture.” Jasmin was also in front of the camera in “Midnight Cowboy” and “Adaptation.”
Many lamented the virtual nature of the celebration. It was not what they would have wanted, but it was the nature of 2020. Dennis Keeley, chair of the undergraduate Photography and Imaging Department at ArtCenter, capably hosted the event, which went off with few hitches.
Jasmin’s photographs are in an exhibition entitled “Lost Angeles” through December 31, 2020 at the Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles. As stated by the Fahey/Klein Gallery in the introduction to the exhibition, “Jasmin’s images eloquently mirror the mythology of the city in the vulnerability and intangible cool of his subjects. There is a nostalgic myth of a splendid and ideal aesthetic stopped and caught forever.”
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