Gallery Index
Odetta & Frank McCourt
We follow the Reverend Gregory Seal Livingston's short eulogy for Michael Jackson with the stories of two more American icons now dead, Odetta Gordon (known as Odetta) and Francis (known as Frank) McCourt.
She was a singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter and human rights activist; he, a high school teacher and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Both were born in 1930 and died within six months of one another, she in the winter of 2008, he, in the summer of 2009.
Both lived and worked and made their home in New York City and would, over the years, occasionally run in to one another at an awards ceremony or fundraiser, the kinds of functions where only the very accomplished are invited to meet.
Which is why photographer and filmmaker Christopher Felver decided to bring them together here in a pair of formal portraits, hers, a head shot, his an author's photo -- as if two high school classmates coupled together in their senior yearbook: Here smile Odetta Gordon and Francis McCourt, the Class of 1947's "Most Likely To Succeed."
Black & White Portraits, Chris Felver
Christopher Felver has photographed practically every twentieth century American painter, poet, musician and novelist. He has also just recently completed his sixth full-length cinematic documentary on poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti.