Jack Delano

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Jack Delano
Jack Delano

Jack Delano (August 1, 1914 – August 12, 1997) was an American photographer for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and a composer noted for his use of Puerto Rican folk material.

Delano was born in Kiev, Ukraine and moved, with his parents and younger brother, to the United States in 1923. Between 1924 and 1932 he studied graphic arts/photography and music (viola and composition)[1] at the Settlement Music School and solfeggio with a professor from the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.[2] After being awarded an art scholarship for his talents, he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) where, from 1928 until 1932, he studied illustration and continued his musical training. While there, Delano was awarded the Kesson traveling fellowship which he took to Europe where he bought a camera that got him interested in photography.

After graduating from the PAFA, Delano proposed a photographic project to the Federal Art Program: a study of mining conditions in the Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania anthracite coal area. Delano sent sample pictures to Roy Stryker and applied for a job at the FSA. Through the help of Edwin Rosskam and Marion Post Wolcott, Stryker offered Delano a job at $2,300/year. As a condition of the job, Delano had to have his own car and driver's license, both of which he acquired before moving to Washington, D.C.

Chicago railyards, 1942. Photograph by Jack Delano.
Chicago railyards, 1942. Photograph by Jack Delano.
"At the bus station." May 1940.
"At the bus station." May 1940.

Before working at the FSA, Delano had done his own processing and developing but he didn't have to do either of that at the FSA. Other photographers working for the FSA include Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks. In 1943 FSA was eliminated as "budget waste" and subsumed into the Office of War Information (OWI).

He travelled to Puerto Rico in 1941 as a part of the FSA project. This trip had such a profound influence on him that he settled there permanently in 1946.

With his wife Irene (a second cousin to fellow photographer Ben Shahn) he worked in the Community Division of the Department of Public Education producing films, for many of which Delano composed the score.[3] Delano also directed Los Peloteros, a Puerto Rican film about poor rural kids and their love for baseball. The film remains a classic in Puerto Rican cinema.

Jack Delano's musical compositions included works of every type: orchestral (many composed for the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra), ballets (composed for Ballet Infantil de Gilda Navarra and Ballets de San Juan), chamber, choral and vocal. His score for the film "Desde las nubes" demonstrates an early use of electronic techniques. Most of his works composed after he moved to Puerto Rico are notable for using folk material in a classical form.[4]

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[edit] References

  1. ^ New Grove Dictionary of American Music
  2. ^ Composers of the Americas page 22
  3. ^ Composers of the Americas page 22
  4. ^ New Grove Dictionary of American Music

[edit] Bibliography

  • H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie (eds), New Grove Dictionary of American Music, (London: Macmillan Press, 1986), volume 1, p 595.
  • Composers of the Americas: biographical data and catalogs of their works, (Washington: Secretaría General, Organización de los Estados Americanos), volume 19, pp 22-27.
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