20 Facts About Hy Hirsh

Hy Hirsh is regarded as a visual music filmmaker, as well as one of the first filmmakers to use electronic imagery in a film.

Hy Hirsh was born in 1911 to Russian immigrants Max and Olga Hirsh.

The family moved to Southern California in 1916 where Hy Hirsh developed an interest in filmmaking and photography.

Hy Hirsh began side work as an art photographer in 1932 and had his first solo exhibition in 1935.

Hy Hirsh discreetly used the museum's darkroom for his own artistic pursuits until he left the museum in 1954.

Hy Hirsh collaborated with Sidney Peterson on several films, and after moving to San Francisco, gave technical advice and assistance to numerous abstract filmmakers, including Jordan Belson, Harry Smith, Frank Stauffacher, Patricia Marx and Larry Jordan.

Hy Hirsh participated in the creation of a number of films before starting to make own abstract animated shorts in 1951.

An avid jazz fan, Hy Hirsh used the music of Thelonious Monk and the Modern Jazz Quartet, as well as African drumming and Caribbean carnival band to score his films.

In 1955 Hy Hirsh relocated to Paris and for a while to Amsterdam where he worked at a puppet animation studio.

Hy Hirsh's films were sometimes accompanied by live jazz musicians and several projectors running at once.

Hy Hirsh is alleged by film historian Willian Moritz to have produced some 15 documentaries for American television, though no documentation has ever been found.

Hy Hirsh had one child, Diane, with Mae Agronowsky in 1934.

The family lived together for two years before Hy Hirsh left, finding traditional family life too confining.

Hy Hirsh was then influenced by the social documentary of the Farm Security Administration photographers who recorded the impact of the Great Depression on displaced workers and their families.

Hy Hirsh followed suit, exploring social issues through visages of vacant lots, rusted machinery, and other images of urban decay.

Hy Hirsh appeared in the publication US Camera in 1936,1937 and 1939.

Hy Hirsh made surrealist self-portraits by superimposing negatives of himself with broken sheets of glass.

Hy Hirsh treated films as malleable objects by constantly editing and re-editing them, using live music instead of pre-recorded soundtracks.

Hy Hirsh's surviving still photographic materials, including hundreds of slides, color prints and gelatin silver prints, are in the archive of Center for Visual Music, Los Angeles.

The Academy Film Archive has preserved a number of Hy Hirsh's films, including Autumn Spectrum, Chasse Des Touches, and Scratch Pad.