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Jim Belfon: Harlem Photographer Extraordinaire By Christopher I. Frierson
Photos by Malik Wilson
Jim Belfon started his career when he was a kid.
He wasn't good at basketball so he decided to take pictures - pictures of everything: his school, his neighborhood, and the people he knew.
And he got paid for it. Mr. Belfon went through his school years immersed in photography.
As an adult, Mr. Belfon decided to teach what he knew to others, so he went to Harlem School of the Arts to teach children all about photography. Later he had to leave the school, but he still kept in touch with the kids. Since he saw that the work he was doing was really helping people, and that his son, Jimmy, really liked doing what his father did, Mr. Belfon decided to get his own place to teach photography.
He visited many community centers to see if they had a place for him to do his work. After six months of looking, he could not find a place, so he decided to make his own. He moved into the Dempsey Multi-Service center at 560 Riverside Drive.
Mr. Belfon was featured on the cover of Columbia University Journal of Fine Arts and Literature. He traveled to Spain, Portugal, London and all over the Caribbean taking pictures of the sites and people. Many of his students had their work published in magazines and many times got paid. A few went to the summer Olympics to be official photographers as guest of Eastman Kodak.
On March 25th, four of Mr. Belfon students took pictures of the Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields. The next day the students presented a 16 x 20" color print matted picture of Ms. Fields at a special reception in her honor and the reopening of the Great Hall at City College.
Mr. Belfon has recently moved from 560 Riverside Drive to 614-18 West 125 Street, and called it the Photographic Center of Harlem. He has 4,000 square feet in his new place, which is more room than he had in his old place (which was only 700 square feet). In this new place, he will be able to build a gallery, computer lab, a dark room, and a framing area. Mr. Belfon said "All the dreams that we have of putting together a fully equipped photographic center, we're able to do that now".
This center should open in late spring of 1998.
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