ST LEONARDS ON SEA.- Lucy Bell Gallery is presenting Val Wilmer: Blue Moments, Black Sounds, an exhibition Wilmer’s insightful photographs of Black musicians, jazz and blues, capturing the spirit of the times.
Val Wilmer is a celebrated British photographer who has been documenting Black music since taking a snapshot of Louis Armstrong at the age of 14. In those early years, Wilmer attended concerts accompanied by her mother, who believed she was too young to go alone.
“In 1956 the King of Jazz came to England. Louis Armstrong played several nights in West London on an extraordinary revolving stage at a hall in Earl’s Court. I went there with my family to see him, and when he and his All-Stars left for Ghana, I followed him out to the airport.”
“While my brother got Louis’s autograph, I asked the trumpeter if I could photograph him, armed with my mother’s Box Brownie. At 14-and-a-half, I was on my way to a lifetime of learning.”
“Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ida Kar and Wayne Miller were my first photographic heroes, along with Dennis Stock for his pictures of James Dean. Looking at their work taught me to think before tripping the shutter; getting to know the musicians taught me the importance of positive representation.”
Wilmer was born in Yorkshire, 1941, where her mother was evacuated during the Second World War, the family returned to London in 1945, where, following the death of her father, her mother, took boarders. As Wilmer’s career gained momentum, working in London darkrooms and for the music press, the family home transformed into a destination for international Jazz and blues figures, Visitors included Charles Mingus, Memphis Slim and Duke Ellington’s saxophonist, Harry Carney. Jess Fuller came to stay.
Wilmer has travelled widely to places at the roots of Jazz – West Africa, Mississippi, New Orleans,– and photographed many hundreds of musicians, from blues and gospel singers in the Deep South, to such noted subjects John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, Ornette Coleman, James Brown, Sun Ra and Albert Ayler. She has also photographed writers including James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe and Langston Hughes and artists Aubrey Williams and Ronald Moody.
In 1973, her exhibition Jazz Seen – The Face of Black Music was shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the second only exhibition at the Museum by a living photographer. Her photographs are now included in many private and public collections including the Victoria and Albert Museum and National Portrait Gallery, London, Musee d’Art Moderne, Paris, Fotografiska Museet, Stockholm and The Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.
Her photographs form the basis for the film, Jazz is Our Religion (Silverscreen, 1972) directed by, John Jeremy. Her books include The Face of Black Music (1976, New York, Da Capo) and appear in countless others including Harmut Geerken: Omniverse – Sun Ra, and Lee Tanner: Jazz Image – Masters of Jazz Photography (2006).
Wilmer’s work as a writer as well as a photographer, has established her as one of the most significant chroniclers of the musician’s communities and of other cultural movements.
Wilmer’s autobiography Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This (1989, the Women’s Press) "is really much more than a book about music. Wilmer's life is something of a distillation of much that was of importance in the 1960s and 1970s. The growing recognition of race as a political factor, of the rise of civil rights. The increasing influence of American culture in British life. The changing British economy [and] the sexual revolution." – B. Bigelow.
In 1983, Wilmer co-founded Format, an all-women’s photographic agency, with Maggie Murray.
Wilmer’s recent publications include Deep Blues 1960–1988 (2023) and American Drummers 1959–1988 (2024), both published by Café Royal Books will be available to buy at the exhibition as well as a selection of her photographic prints.
