Her Aim Is True is a biography about the famous, rock and roll photographer, Jini Duckworth, Dellaccio.
Jini Dellaccio was born in a small town in Indiana, in 1917. She and her family fought their way through the depression by relying on government rations. She began performing at the nearby music hall and was paid $5.00 each time she played on stage.
She decided to hit the road with the Betty McGuire band, which consisted of twelve females. They performed a lot in Hollywood, Florida and that is when she met her husband, Carl Dellaccio, who was in the United States Navy at the time. After marrying in 1946, they settled in Chicago, Illinois, but Jini soon realized that she had no skills in cooking and cleaning because she had been on the road for 12 years. She talked it over with Carl and decided to pick her saxophone back up and play in the local clubs.
Carl was worried about Jini, when she was working because she never got home until 2:00 a.m. So she decided to turn in her saxophone for a $70.00 Leica camera. She thought if she could only take pictures of events and people, she would be able to remember them more. Of course, she didn’t even know how to load the film into the camera, but with the help of a thick manual, she became very proficient at photography.
Carl landed a job in Tacoma, Washington so Jini packed up her camera and headed to the concert scenes in the local area. At this time, Carl and Jini made up their minds that they did not want to have any children because they felt their careers were their children. In 1966, she took interest in garage and concert bands, but her overall favorite was The Sonics, whom were known for songs; Psycho, Walk The Dog, and The Witch.
The Wailers contacted Jini and asked her to create an album cover for them, she immediately agreed, even though she had never done one before. They met her at her home in Gig Harbor, Washington, but for the first four hours they had lunch and Jini conducted her own personal interview of the band. She liked to capture spontaneous positions, instead of staged poses and that is why she became so famous. She was among only a few photographers that liked to photograph her subjects in the wild outdoors.
In 1976, forty year old Jini could be seen at a concert where The Who was performing. She was at the edge of the stage, snapping photos as the members were destroying their guitars and getting out of control. It never phased her, when her friends began to question her motives of photographing bands that played devil music.
During Jini’s career, she photographed The Yardbirds, Mick Jagger And The Rolling Stones, Daily Flash, and Merrilee Rush and The Turnabouts, often out of her home.
When Carl became sick, Jini hung up her camera, but she promised him that she would pick it back up some day and she did fifteen years later. She retired her old camera and bought a brand new Hassleblad, which she continued to used throughout the duration of her career. In a reunion with The Sonics in 2010, 44 years later, she picked up her camera once again to photograph them performing at a radio station.
Review
Her Aim Is True is a very loving and touching documentary about Jini Dellaccio. During the entire viewing of the movie, you could feel and see the love and excitement that Jini had toward photography and the bands. She at one time admitted to loving them and you could see it in her eyes, when she was around them. When she was in her dark room developing her photos, she admitted to playing her classical music at a very high volume. She also said that she looked at her photos just like someone would listen to music.
Jini had true passion about her photography and she had a way of pulling you into the moment that each photo was captured on her camera. Her famous photos of Neil Young (1967) and Mick Jagger still hang today in the Tacoma Art Museum. The editing and filming of this wonderful documentary was done with exemplary techniques and deserves an 8.5 out of 10.
Jay Skelton is a fan of all television shows and movies. He tries his best to keep up with the latest foreign television shows and movies. Jay loves skinny dipping in the dark too.
