Jack Nicholson. Meryl Streep. LL Cool J. Muhammad Ali. Patti Smith. How many other luminaries did James Hamilton frame in his camera lens from the late 1960s through the 2000s? As film director Wes Anderson, the executive producer of the new documentary Uncropped, puts it in the film, “James’s work — it conjures up cinema to me. Essentially living in a darkroom. This is James Stewart in Rear Window. This is the guy.” And indeed, the doc includes a portrait Hamilton took of Alfred Hitchcock, looking less like the director of voyeuristic Technicolor marvels than like an ostentatiously jolly — all the better to lure you in — Santa Claus.
Yet while Hamilton captured era-defining images of celebs and movers and shakers and kids cavorting on the streets — the veritable flesh of New York City in those decades — he was also always on a journalistic mission to deliver that first draft of history, however bloody and brutal it could be. His assignments as a Village Voice staff photographer, as well as for other major publications, found him covering battles around the world, whether photographing police riots in Tompkins Square Park and wars in South America or sneaking photos of the Tiananmen Square massacre past Chinese censors and into U.S. newspapers.
Uncropped includes interviews with such Voice alumni as Thulani Davis, Richard Goldstein, and Mark Jacobson, as well as photographer Sylvia Plachy, who also provided many an indelible halftone to the pages of “The Weekly Newspaper of New York.”
But talking heads can only talk. In contrast, Hamilton’s black-bordered, full-frame images long ago surpassed the old “a picture says a thousand words” metric and, at their best, leave you speechless. ❖
In theaters April 26. On Amazon and Apple TV May 7.
Additionally, there will be special events and Q&A’s at the IFC Center, including a sneak preview and Q&A with the director of Uncropped, D.W. Young, James Hamilton, and Kathy Dobie, moderated by former Voice reporter Joe Conason – Thursday, April 25, at 6:45 p.m.
Friday, April 26: Q&A with D.W. Young and James Hamilton, moderated by film critic Amy Taubin, at 6:50 p.m.
Saturday, April 27: Q&A with D.W. Young, James Hamilton, and Sylvia Plachy, moderated by photographer and photo editor Jeffrey Henson-Scales, at 6:50 p.m.
And note, in the related post below, that Hamilton took photos for the Voice as recently as 2021.
