Clip and Photo Licensing

PHOTO LICENSING

GME's Photo Licensing Reel comprises a vast array of photographs taken by Raimondo Borea (1926—1982) and Hugh Bell (1927—2012), whose collections are represented by Gartenberg Media Enterprises for licensing, exhibition, and placement.

Our Photo Licensing Reel aims to both celebrate and properly contextualize the under-seen oeuvres of these two overlooked 20th-century photographers. As fate would have it, Borea’s and Bell’s names were listed next to each other in a 1955 issue of Popular Photography magazine. Decades later, their archives have found their way to GME. The formidable bodies of work of both artists complement one another, together serving to illustrate a significant cultural and artistic period in American life.

Over a 40-year career of active photography, Raimondo Borea amassed an impressive body of work that permeated all areas of fine art photography, television, music, book publishing, and advertising. As a freelance photographer, Borea had extensive behind-the-scenes access to The Today Show, The Tonight Show, and Firing Line from the 1950s through the 1970s. During this period, he photographed such notable hosts as Johnny Carson, Jack Parr, Dave Garroway, Barbara Walters, Tom Brokaw, Jane Pauley, and William F. Buckley, Jr. He also documented the appearances of many celebrity guests, including Bette Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Sean Connery, Sophia Loren, Farrah Fawcett, and Twiggy.

GME has licensed a number of Borea's images, including a photograph of Shari Lewis and Lambchop on The Tonight Show for the 2023 documentary Shari and Lamb Chop (Official Selection, DOC NYC) and a portrait of Dave Garroway for the cover of Jodie Peeler's 2023 book Peace: The Wide, Wide World of Dave Garroway. Borea's photograph of the acting class taught by John Houseman at the Juilliard School, featuring student Kevin Kline, was used as the frontespiece of the book Acting in the Academy: The History of Professional Actor Training in US Higher Education (2016), authored by Peter Zazzali.

Recently, a photograph of Borea's that depicts racial integration in the 1960s was licensed for Darren Newbury's Cold War Photographic Diplomacy (2024), published by Pennsylvania State University Press. GME also licensed Borea's portrait of educator Kenneth B. Clark for the fifth edition of David Sadker and Karen Zittelman's textbook Teachers, Schools and Society: A Brief Introduction to Education, published by McGraw Hill, as well as for the PBS American Experience documentary The Blinding of Isaac Woodard (2021). The Clark portrait has since been placed on permanent display at the entry to the Kenneth B. Clark Auditorium at the New York State Museum in Albany.

GME has also licensed numerous photographs by Hugh Bell. Dubbed a "poet behind the lens" in Thomas Allen Harris' 2014 documentary Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People, Bell chronicled a number of notable jazz musicians beginning in the 1950s. Arguably his most famous work is a naturally-lit, impressionistic view of jazz performers, titled Hot Jazz (1952), which was included in MoMA's Family of Man exhibit in 1955 and shown again at the Museum in the 2022 exhibit In and Around Harlem.

Bell created images that appeared on numerous album and magazine covers, including Sarah Vaughan's seminal 1955 LP After Hours. Bell's portrait of Vaughan was licensed by GME for a USPS Forever Stamp in 2021. His Vaughan portrait was also licensed — along with Bell's images of fellow jazz icons Thelonius Monk and Billie Holiday — for the forthcoming revised edition of Deborah Willis' 2000 book Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present, which was the inspiration for Harris' aforementioned documentary. A suite of four photos in which Bell captured Holiday in candid fashion backstage at Carnegie Hall were licensed for James Erskine's 2019 documentary Billie, and appeared in the Harvard University Museum's exhibition titled Art of Jazz in 2016.

Bell photographed for numerous print advertisements and magazine covers, many of which were aimed at an African-American audience. As Bell was of Afro-Caribbean descent, he also photographed extensively in the Caribbean region.

In addition to Borea and Bell's oeuvres, GME licenses images from an array of films we distribute to academic institutions. Most recently, we licensed two stills from Warren Sonbert's Amphetamine (1966) for Dr. Maurice Nagington's book The Moral Lessons of Chemsex: A Critical Approach, which was recently published by Routledge.

To view a full history of our photo licenses, click here. To learn more about the photography collections we represent, please contact GME's Fine Arts Curator, David Deitch, at david@gartenbergmedia.com.

CLIP LICENSING

The Gartenberg Media Clip Licensing Reel highlights scenes from experimental and independent films, distributed by GME, that we have licensed for theatrical, television, and streaming projects. These clips contain footage of notable personalities, such as Andy Warhol, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Miles Davis, Allen Ginsberg, and Jaqueline Kennedy O’Nassis and her extended family. Scenes of note include Lou Reed, Edie Sedgwick, and Gerard Malanga performing with The Velvet Underground, as well as Michaelangelo Antonioni visiting Shirley Clarke and Jonas Mekas at The Film-Makers’ Cooperative.

Clips from this collection, which date back to the 1940s, have been licensed to documentary productions by leading directors, including Martin Scorsese, Todd Haynes, Errol Morris, Ric Burns, and Joe Berlinger. These clips have been licensed for theatrical release and broadcast on PBS, BBC, Vh1, Showtime, AppleTV+, WDR, and other major international networks. Filmmakers whose work is popular with our licensing clients include Jonas Mekas, Warren Sonbert, Peter Emmanuel Goldman, Gideon Bachmann, Jackie Raynal, and Jack Waters. Numerous other filmmakers (not represented in the sample reel) are also available via GME's extensive library of avant-garde films and documentaries. Our objective in this enterprise is to increase the value and import of these artist-driven moving image works by placing them into a larger cultural context.

GME specializes in the distribution and licensing of the films of Jonas Mekas, an icon of the independent film scene and the father of the “diary film.” Mekas’ work widely documents the alternative and underground culture, especially in New York City, during the 1960s and into the new millennium. His filmic portraits include a young Caroline Kennedy and John Jr. frolicking in the ocean at the Montauk Estate of Andy Warhol in the early 1970s, John Lennon’s birthday party with Yoko Ono in a hotel room in Syracuse, New York, and the Velvet Underground and Nico performing at a psychiatrist’s convention, as well as scenes of Mick Jagger, George Maciunas, Timothy Leary, and many other cultural icons. Click to view the complete list of Mekas films currently available from GME.

Gartenberg Media is also the exclusive licensor of moving images from the Estate of Warren Sonbert, including his scenes from New York in the 1960s as well as shots from his global travels during the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s. For the new digital releases of Sonbert’s early films, see The Warren Sonbert Collection. For more information about Warren Sonbert, see Programming & Curating.

GME also licenses, on a selective basis, clips from DVDs that we distribute to the university market. Many of these clips are licensed in conjunction with our European partner Re:Voir, and in accord with the individual filmmakers or their estates.

To view a full history of our clip licenses, click here.

Recent Licenses