Nickelodeon Recreates Iconic ‘Great Day in Harlem’ Photograph With 54 Black Animation Professionals (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Selome Hailu In 1958, Esquire published “A Great Day in Harlem,” a photo taken by Art Kane of 57 jazz musicians ranging from Thelonious Monk to Coleman Hawkins gathered together on a New York City Stoop.

In an homage to that historic picture, on June 5, 2022, Nickelodeon Animation and Paramount Pictures organized “A Great Day in Animation,” which features 54 Black professionals working in animation today.

Taken by Randy Shropshire with Jeff Vespa as production lead and obtained exclusively by Variety, the photo is above.Though Nickelodeon and Paramount put the event together and hosted it on the Paramount backlot, “A Great Day in Animation” includes artists from all across the industry.

The idea for the photo came from Marlon West, a visual effects supervisor for Disney whose credits include “The Lion King,” “Encanto” and the upcoming Disney+ series “Iwájú.” For decades, West has been moved by “A Great Day in Harlem,” as well as Jean Bach’s Oscar-nominated film of the same name, which documents how the photo came to be. “I’ve had a framed copy of that photo in my office or somewhere for 30 years,” West tells Variety. “And I thought it would be cool to do the same thing with Black animators.”Aided by his friends and colleagues Bruce Smith, Peter Ramsey and Everett Downing Jr., West began putting together a list of animation professionals to include, aiming for legends like Floyd Norman, whose work on 1959’s “Sleeping Beauty” made him Disney’s first-ever Black animator, and his close collaborator Leo D.