To design the book Anna-Rose collaborated with graphic designer Billy Paterson. Alongside the shoots, Anna-Rose had interviewed each subject, but when including the textual aspect of the project, Billy was keen to avoid making it feel like a directory. Instead of including people’s interviews next to their image, they were collated at the end of the book – allowing the images (at first) to speak for themselves. “I wanted it to be a bit like people watching, I suppose!” Billy says. In terms of overall aesthetic, Billy wanted the book to emulate the historical “almost theatrical” connotations of its title – a juxtaposition to the content that he found interesting – “I didn’t think that trackies, Buffalos and band tees were really the first things that sprung to mind when I thought of being ‘adorned’.” To create this sense of grandeur Billy opted for a deep red fabric hardcover, and Klim Type Foundry’s Signifier, for longform text.

The book is brimming with great outfits and insightful observations about style and identity. For Anna-Rose the portrait of her long-time friend Ocean stands out. Ocean’s portrait shows them in a black skin-tight body suit and cowboy hat, splayed elegantly on their bed, almost appearing mid-dance. In their interview, Ocean states “dressing up as well as other things like dancing, listening to music, seeing friends and meditating, all these things are self-care”, a sentiment that resonates with Anna-Rose: “I think part of the reason why I dress up every day is to make myself feel good and confident,” she says. Billy, on the other hand, has a soft spot for Belle’s photo for its “punchy” colour and composition, but also the ethos she outlines in her interview: “Someone once said to me you spend half your time on your bed and half your time on your feet, so I spend good money on bedding and shoes.”

Not only fuelled by the desire to show people at their most authentic, Anna-Rose also hopes To Be Adorned raises the importance of more conscious fashion choices – many of the people featured throughout have made their own clothes or sourced them secondhand. “The journey to finding that special thing can be equally as important as the garment itself,” she says. Billy also sees the project’s pertinence as a piece of history – a visual guide to a specific, if fleeting, moment in time. “While style is blurred, fragmented, and also informed by the internet, it also means that these things are constantly changing and fleeting,” he says. “So I feel that the book acts as a way to solidify and create a physical time capsule for these photos to live within and look back on over time.”

American photogpraher Benn Mitchell wearing a sandwich board in London. COURTESY PHOTO

Photographers live by an extreme version of carpe diem; it’s a second that they look to seize. The good ones can read the tea leaves and sense that moment before it arrives.

For 17-year-old Benn Mitchell, it is the moment a squinting Humphrey Bogart in a pinstripe suit holds a cigarette between his puckered lips, half of his face in shadows, that is worth printing.

Mitchell picked this instant over the climactic moments of ignition and exhale.

Every actor has a mechanism to shed a character they have been playing. In between takes, Bogie decompressed with a cigarette. We know this because Mitchell’s camera snapped the classy star taking a smoke break with the poise that so characterized him. Expression, body language, attire and that glorious jawline achieve perfect harmony in that second. It might as well have been in the script.

This sensual image from 1943 is among 52 timeless photographs featured in “Benn Mitchell Photographs: Hollywood to NYC,” through Oct. 22 at Boca Raton Museum of Art. The exhibition focuses on two bodies of work in the esteemed American photographer’s career: Warner Brothers photographs from 1943 and New York City scenes from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Judging by the selection, success was a given, but nobody could have predicted it would be early on.

Bogie and Marilyn greet visitors to the second-floor gallery housing photographs by American photographer Benn Mitchell. GRETEL SARMIENTO / FLORIDA WEEKLY

The second-floor gallery houses images of cafeterias, trains, storefront windows, movie theaters, and umbrella holding pedestrians battling weather conditions. There’s the obligatory print of the Empire State Building, which stands tall and powerful against a cloudy sky. Also here standing grand is the lion sculpture outside the iconic New York Public Library; its commanding quality courtesy of a low angle shot. Then there’s the curious inclusion of a gelatin silver print from 1950 portraying three men walking arm in arm. We can count at least three indiscreet onlookers who follow them as the men approach a theater playing “Suddenly Last Summer,” starring Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.

 

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The New York City native, who became an avid supporter of the museum upon retiring to Boca Raton until his death in 2021, sold his first photograph to LIFE magazine while still a teenager. Included in the show is a 1943 letter from the magazine advising Mitchell a $25 check for his Chilly Billy photograph — featured in the Jan. 25 issue — is on the way. It, too, anticipates the success that was to come.

“I’ll be looking forward with you to getting some of your pictures in soon again,” ends the letter signed by Ruth Lester.

An eager young Mitchell next headed to Hollywood having been granted permission by Warner Brothers to linger around its studios and document movie stars, extras and behind-the-scenes professionals.

An unidentified actor dressed as a cowboy points a pistol at someone kept out of the frame in one print acquired by the museum this year. His character enjoys being in control and takes his time issuing what we presume to be a warning. Images like this one tempt the dormant voiceover artist in us. A plausible dialogue for this scene could go: “Eeeeeeasy there, cowboy. Is that a threat?” At which time the guy with the pistol says: “No, that’s a promise.”

The museum has not been able to properly identify subjects and movie sets such as this one. Anyone with information is encouraged to get in touch. Until then, feel free to fill in the blanks.

Early in the show, photographer turns subject and human billboard in one black-and-white image depicting a smirking Mitchell sporting a sandwich board. The story goes that while on assignment in London, Mitchell spotted a man on Oxford Street advertising: “Express passports and high-class portraiture.” He offered money to the man to borrow the board and had his wife, Esther, take this amusing photo.

If the above examples don’t entice you to spend a few minutes with “Benn Mitchell Photographs,” consider visiting anyway; if only to witness what bold young minds can achieve and why we shouldn’t rush to dismiss them.

Following his time at Warner Brothers studios and a two-year service as a U.S. Navy photographer, Mitchell returned to New York City and studied at Columbia University. He went on to open his own commercial studio at 25, eight years after that $25 check from LIFE magazine.

LUMBERTON – Award-winning Bill Norment, a colorful character in his day, captured the largely rural world of Lumberton and Robeson County during the second half of the 20th century in stark black and white.

Norment served as a longtime photographer – as well as sports editor, city editor, associate editor and editor emeritus – with The Robesonian. He worked for the Lumberton newspaper for more than five decades before his death at age 66 in 1998.

His legacy is being remembered during the weekend with a special photo exhibit – “Bill Norment: A Legacy in Black and White Photographs” – 2-5 p.m. on Sunday at the Robeson County History Museum, 101 S. Elm St.

Admission is free.

The public is invited, and light refreshments will be offered.

“William Douglas Norment was one of North Carolina’s great photographers,” the History Museum states in a news release promoting the special exhibit.

Some knew him simply as “Billy Doug.”

But Norment’s photos gave life – a corresponding visual component – to the print stories that adorned the pages of the Robesonian over the week during his career.

According to the release, the History Museum was able to procure the Norment collection courtesy of a gift from his children. Photo journalism was shot in black and white during Norment’s newspaper tenure, and his collection of enlarged and printed works reflect that era from the days of yesteryear.

“This isn’t routine newspaper work. It’s art,” Scott Bigelow, vice president of the museum, said in a news release.

“Viewers will see a range of Bill’s work, including sports, law enforcement, family and feature photography,” Faye Middleton, who hung the exhibit, said in the news release. “There is also a collection of historical photos and a selection of his professional work.”

Donnie Douglas, a former sports editor and former top editor at The Robesonian, said when he first arrived at the newspaper that Norment was the staff photographer.

“He was an accomplished photographer,” Douglas said Wednesday. “From my memory, he was kind of a grandfatherly figure in the newsroom. He got along well with people. He had a good eye for photography. And he was always helpful. He stayed holed up in the darkroom. He was a real pleasure to be around but not someone to bring attention to himself. That was his nature.”

In 1974, the N.C. Press Association named Norment Photographer of the Year. He was also selected as Southern Photographer of the Year during his extensive tenure at the paper.

In 1958, a series of Norment’s photographs of the Lumbee Indians historical rout of the Ku Klux Klan was published in Life magazine and distributed worldwide, the news release said. The KKK had tried to intimidate Lumbee tribal members in Maxton, but the Robeson County-based Indians fought back at what is remembered as the Battle of Hayes Pond.

They drove the Klan out of town.

Mike Doares, past president of the History Museum, helped move the Norment collection from his Lumberton home to the museum. It was Doares and his wife, Monica, who organized the collection for exhibit.

“When I was in high school,” Doares said in the release, “Bill paid me $5 for sports photographs. That was a lot of money then, and he was great to work for.”

Bigelow worked for Norment as a reporter at The Robesonian.

“Bill was a master photographer,” Bigelow recalled, “and in those days, that meant he was a master of the dark room. He was a patient and soft-spoken teacher.”

“Bill had a great eye as viewers of this exhibit will see,” Bigelow said in the release.

A near life-long resident of Lumberton, Norment attended Catawba College where he played football and served as editor of the school newspaper.

He also served his country in the Army.

Norment participated in Golden Gloves boxing, and he was known to be an avid radio-controlled model airplane enthusiast.

“I think everybody liked Bill and appreciated the work he did,” Douglas said. “He was a little bit of an institution in Lumberton.”