DON HUNSTEIN,
1928-2017

Columbia Records photographer Don Hunstein, whose work includes legendary album covers by Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday and Glenn Gould, died 3/18 of Alzheimer’s disease. He was 88.

Hunstein shot Dylan and his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, for The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan; Davis for Kind of Blue and Nefertiti; Holiday’s Lady in Satin; and Gould for Bach. Unique in that he worked across musical genres and was equally adept at color and black & white, he also shot Duke Ellington, Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand, Leonard Bernstein, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin.

Columbia Records hired Hunstein, who learned photography while in the Air Force in England, him in 1956 to help organize the photo library. He was first staff photographer, then the label’s director of photography until the label shuttered its photo operations in 1986.

One side project, a book of New York City photographs, was published in 1962; Dylan used a shot Times Square for his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One.