Frank H. Jump
A true ‘renaissance man’ Jump starts the classroom scene at a Brooklyn public school – NY Daily News
Frank Jump prepares to read and showing slides from his book 'Faded Ads of New York City' in an appearance at the Queens Historical Society in Flushing - ROBERT MECEA FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Author, AIDS activist and ‘urban archeologist’ Frank Jump is now also a civil servant, teaching at Brooklyn’s PS 119
by Lisa Colangelo for the NY Daily News
Frank Jump is one of those people who is impossible to describe in a title, a sentence or even a full paragraph.
He is an urban archeologist whose photographs of fading advertisements have brought him acclaim. He’s also an accomplished musician and writer.
Jump is an AIDS activist who has defied all odds since finding out he was HIV-positive more than 25 years ago.
To say he’s a survivor would be an understatement. Jump beat a bout with cancer about 10 years ago.
Add to that list the title of civil servant. Jump is a New York City schoolteacher at the P.S. 119 Amersfort School of Social Awareness in Brooklyn.
Read more: A true ‘renaissance man’ Jump starts the classroom scene at a Brooklyn public school – NY Daily News.
Frank Jump’s ‘Fading Ads of New York City’ preserves those signs found on walls of old NYC -BY SHERRYL CONNELLY
Book records his life’s work of finding ads for elixirs, pain remedies and pool halls of yesteryear
BY SHERRYL CONNELLY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, January 2 2012, 6:00 AM
One of the ads from Frank Jump’s ‘Fading Ads of New York City,’ this one for a pain remedy of yesteryear.
Throughout the city, Frank Jump sees what others don’t. He sees ghost signs — those ads painted on the sides of buildings that retreat from the eye as time passes — and they leap out at him.
Then he reaches for his camera.
“Fading Ads of New York City” is a collection drawn from thousands of pics taken throughout the five boroughs. It began on a long ago day when Jump went to Harlem with a friend. At Frederick Douglass Blvd. and 147th Street, he noticed the giant wall mural boasting of the powers of an elixir, Omega Oil.
“My jaw dropped,” says Jump. “I climbed up on scaffolding and got the picture before the police told me to get down.”
So began a life’s work.
At first, Jump shot in chrome. His slide show of the tell-tale signs of a New York gone by numbers upward of 5,000. Since switching to digital, his collection of sightings has swelled to tens of thousands taken all over the world.
“Whenever we travel, we get a room in the seediest part of town,” says Jump. “Usually you find these ads in a part of town where they haven’t done any renovations yet.”
Ask Jump what his favorite signs are in the book, and you get an idea of how he works. Capturing “Reckett’s Blue,” an ad on Washington Ave. in Brooklyn that is now obscured, came about because a relative grew bored at a family dinner. He took her out to show her how he worked.
“We came on a construction pit, so I broke through the plywood and there it was,” says Jump, who teaches media literacy to elementary school students. “She thought I had staged it, but neighbors told us it had just been exposed that week.”
One of the more difficult shoots came when the owners of an auto parts store refused him access to the roof so he could snap the “Hams and Capocolli” sign that stared over the Brooklyn Navy Yard. They turned their backs, up he went, so they loosed the pit bulls.
“But for some reason the dogs took a liking to me, which made the guys even angrier,” he says. “When they chased me out, one of the dogs followed me and wouldn’t go back.”
Jump was 26 in 1986 and working in theater “off, off, Off-Broadway,” when he was diagnosed as HIV-positive. After being told he had only a few good years left, if that, his reaction was to max out his credit cards. One of those purchases was a camera.
He is a survivor, he says, like the signs he memorializes. More than half of the ads he photographed for the book are gone now, but all outlived their expectancy.
“So many of them outlasted the products they advertised,” he notes. “They are a metaphor for survival.”
And brick-and-mortar proof of it, as well.
Frank H. Jump in Front of Eaglo Paint Ad – Nostrand Avenue & Glenwood Road – Flatbush 2001
Taken by Dr. Andrew Irving, Professor of Visual Anthropology, University of Manchester © Irving
This was taken by Dr. Andrew Irving a year before this ad was covered up. For more history of this ad go to the Fading Ad Campaign website. While I’m still editing for the publication of the eBook for this project, it is my desire to offer some of the images ahead of time.
Not Fade Away – Frank H. Jump – Produced & Directed by Jim Sayegh
a film produced and directed by Jim Sayegh
Signs and vines weather and grow.
Brick, pigment, plant and lime-
Tenuously intertwined through time.
As paint degrades and image fades,
Soft tones evolve
From salmon pinks and jades-
Into sand and grime.
– Frank H. Jump, Fading Ad Campaign
Highly skilled television director with wide-ranging experience • Multi-camera studio drama • Live, multi-camera news, talk, and lifestyle • Single camera location drama • Single camera news and sports features • Extensive special effects and post-production • Production and technical systems consultant • Control Room and post-production AD
Specialties
- multi-camera studio directing, control room and post-production AD – LinkedIn
Mr. Sayegh has a BA in Journalism from New York University and is currently an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College where he is completing his Masters in Fine Arts.
Obama Lied – Don't Ask, Don't Tell – Bob Kisken Editorial – Rachel Maddow Show
Lt. Colonel Victor Fehrenbach Discharged For Being Gay – Rachel Maddow Show
VIDEO REMOVED
Caspar Star-Tribune – Bob Kisken Editorial Letter
Editor:
Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach has served 18 years in the Air Force. He is the recipient of at least 30 awards and decorations, including nine air medals, one of them for heroism, as well as campaign medals for Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. He is now a flight instructor in Idaho.
The Air Force is about to discharge him because he is gay. What insanity.
Sen. Barry Goldwater had this to say years ago:
“After more than 50 years in the military and politics, I am still amazed to see how upset people can get over nothing. Lifting the ban on gays in the military isn’t exactly nothing, but it’s pretty damned close.
“Everyone know that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar. They’ll be serving long after we’re all dead and buried. That should not surprise anyone.”
Too bad some of the people in Washington don’t have the sense Sen. Goldwater did.
ROBERT KISKEN, Glenrock
© Frank H. Jump
Dismay Over Obama’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Turnabout
By Mark Thompson / Washington – Tuesday, Jun. 09, 2009
Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty
Members of ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) demonstrate against the Defense Department’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in front of a recruitment center in Times Square, New York City – TIME.COM
