search    Copyright © 1996—2010, Aubrey Organics®. All Rights Reserved. Contact us for more information. Site Credits.

The Arts Poetry Film Music Gallery Fiction  The Arts: Art Gallery    GALLERY—Bud Lee's Americans (From Summer/Fall 2007) by Silvia Curbelo Human faces are such a world. —Henri Cartier-Bresson Jackie Curtis, 1969 Bud Lee captures a rare quiet moment with drag queen and Andy Warhol protegé Jackie Curtis at the Chelsea Hotel. Mentioned by name in the Lou Reed song "Take a Walk on the Wild Side," Jackie is often cited as the inspiration for the "glam rock" look of the 1970s. Every great portrait carries at its core the understanding that an exchange has taken place between photographer and subject, that something much larger than what the camera sees has been captured—a time, a place, a way of thinking, indeed, a whole world. For 40 years Bud Lee has steered his small Leica with dead-on accuracy through the heart of American culture, photographing our icons and our villains, the famous and the anonymous, the glamorous and the profane, all on their own home turf. Last year, the Tampa Museum of Art paid homage to his life's work with the first major retrospective of his career. There, portraits of Mick Jagger, Clint Eastwood, Faye Dunaway, Norman Rockwell and Federico Fellini shared wall space with images of drag queens, carnival performers, mermaids and flower children, as well as some hard-hitting street work from his years as a photojournalist. Early on, Lee's straightforward, naturalistic approach and affinity for photographing people on the fringe put him in the same league as Diane Arbus, with whom he worked at Esquire magazine in the late 1960s. But while Arbus is all sharp edges and hard lines, Lee's images are often playfully subversive, rendered with a warmth and humor that lend even his most disturbing subject matter a kind of innocence. At their quirky best, his photographs celebrate the strangeness in the ordinary, offering a fresh and candid view of Americana that verges on the romantic. The son of a career diplomat, Lee sharpened his skills during a stint in the Army in the early 1960s, photographing for Stars and Stripes. By 1967 he had settled in New York City, working as a photojournalist for Life. That year, his wrenching image of a 12-year-old African- American boy wounded by police during the Newark race riots won him a Life magazine cover and their coveted Photographer of the Year award. Throughout his long career Lee has worked for such publications as Esquire, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Town and Country, Vogue and the New York Times Sunday Magazine. In 2003, Lee suffered two consecutive strokes, which resulted in some paralysis to his left side and loss of vision in one eye. Confined to a wheelchair and trying to adjust to limited mobility, he has turned his attention to painting and has tried his hand at digital photography. For more information about Bud Lee's work, or to purchase signed prints visit www.budleepicturemaker.com, or contact The Serge Group at (813) 835-5069. —Silvia Curbelo Al Green, 1972 Shot in a cotton field near Green's Alabama hometown for the cover of his album Let's Stay Together, this nude image was never used. Another, less edgy photograph by Bud Lee appears on the album. Super Human, 1968 A hearing- and speech-impaired group clowns around for Lee's camera at Universal Studios in Los Angeles. Scull Sisters, 1988 Cuban-Chinese artists and twin sisters Haydée and Sahara Scull, known for their humorous three-dimensional paintings of Old Havana and Miami's South Beach. Mourner, 1968 While working for Life magazine, Lee shot these moving images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s funeral in Atlanta. Red Hat, Blue Hearts, 1968 Return to top