Jamine Miller When She Sang With Fantasy

I shot these in February 1970 for use on an album by a local rock group, Fantasy, who had just signed with Liberty Records. The cover featured a fanciful painting by one of the group, Billie Robins. Incorporated into the image were little stark black and white photos of the four members. I shot the photos with strongly directional lighting against a black background, and then printed them so as to eliminate any trace of middle tones. These photos of Jamine hadn't yet been reduced to just black and white.

Fantasy came out with two albums. One song, Stoned Cowboy, was a big hit. The group eventually broke up, everybody going their seperate ways. A few months ago I was reading the Miami Herald and there was a sizeable obituary for Jamine. She was 55 and died in Tampa from drugs. I found out that she never liked performing live but had appeared on dozens of records by about every major rock group there was. Put her in the studio and she was in her glory! She also wrote and arranged music for a lot of the major rock groups.

In these 1970 photos she was either fifteen years old or perhaps had just turned sixteen. The camera was my trusty old Minolta Autocord. The scans were off the original contact sheets, hence the dust spots. We miss you, Jamine.