A revelatory look at the photography that shaped the American jazz age.
In this book, Alan John Ainsworth considers the work of a range of American jazz photographers from the turn of the twentieth century through the Jazz Age and into the 1960s. Drawing on extensive archival research, Ainsworth examines jazz as a visual subject, explores its attraction to different types of photographers, and analyzes why and how they approached the subject in the ways they did.
While some of the photographers are widely recognized today, the volume also explores lesser-known figures of the period—including African American photojournalists, studio photographers, early-twentieth-century emigres, and Jewish exiles of the 1930s—whose contributions are often overlooked. Informed by ideas from contemporary photographic theory and with a foreword by Darius Brubeck, Sight Readings is a wide-ranging, eye-opening new look at twentieth-century jazz photography and the people behind it.
Author(s): Alan John Ainsworth
Publisher: Intellect
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 473
City: Bristol
Front Cover
Half Title
Frontispiece
Sight Readings Photographers and American Jazz, 1900– 60
Copyright information
Dedication
Table of contents
Illustrations
Foreword
Acknowledgments
A Note on Language
Introduction
Approaching Jazz Photography
I. Agency and jazz photography
II. Scope of the study
III. Methodology
Notes
1 Jazz Photography and Photographers, 1900–60
I. The significance of jazz photographs
Photographs and the “Golden Age” of jazz
Interest in jazz photography
II. Key names in jazz photography
Studio photographers
African American jazz photography
White photographers of the interwar period
The European exiles
Notes
2 Jazz Writing and the Photographic Image
I. Jazz studies and visual evidence
II. Perception and surface interpretation
The lure of photographic surfaces: Four bebop pioneers
III. Conclusion: The new jazz photography canon
Notes
3 The Jazz Image as Document
I. Introduction
II. Reading documents
Musicians and their activities
Musical relationships
Evolution of jazz bands
Discographies
Studio recording techniques
Gender and race in jazz
Life on the road
The jazz family album
Notes
4 Expression in the Jazz Image
I. Visualizing the sounds of jazz
Sight and sound
Visualizing musical embodiment
Spontaneity and improvisation
Photography and interiority
II. Visualizing jazz culture
Jazz as subculture
An artistic subculture
Black culture
The “jazz life”
III. The expressivity of material objects
IV. Conclusion: Reuniting document and expression
Notes
5 Jazz in the Portrait Studio
I. Artistic and theatrical portrait studios
Theatrical portrait studios
Hollywood modernism
II. Jazz enters the studio
Early jazz studio portraiture
Jazz “stars” and the portrait
III. Jazz in the émigré studio
Early emigrants and strategies of assimilation
Maurice Seymour Studio
Murray Korman
Bruno of Hollywood
James J. Kriegsmann
IV. Mid-century studio photography
V. Conclusion
Notes
6 Document and Realism
Early African American Jazz Photography
I. Black photography in the early twentieth century
The development of black photography
“First-generation” concerns
II. New Orleans Band Photography
III. Black studios, 1900–1930s
James Van Der Zee
Edward Elcha
Carroll T. Maynard
Woodard’s Studios
IV. Conclusion: Authenticity from the inside
Notes
7 Expressive Realism African American Photography
I. “Second-generation” Black identity and photography
Communities and the Black press
The nature of expressive realism
II. Black photographers and jazz
Jacks of all trades
African American eyes on music
Charles “Teenie” Harris: Celebrating the unidentified
Howard Morehead and the glamour of jazz
The photojournalist’s’ credo: Bob Douglas and Ted Williams
III. Expressive realism after mid-century
Agency and expression: Roy DeCarava
The insider: Milt Hinton
IV. Conclusion
Notes
8 Authenticity and Art
“New Generation” White Photography
I. A new generation
Photographers and the new middle class
Authenticity, art, and culture in the 1930s
Authenticity and art: The “cultural whole”
A common artistic discourse
Jazz and the new generation
Photographers and jazz
II. Framing authenticity and art
Provenance and place: Documenting authenticity
III. Authenticity and the “amateurs”
Expressions of art
Capturing the artistry of the jazz musician
The “look of jazz”
IV. Conclusion
Notes
9 Interrogating Jazz
Exiles and Jewish Photography
I. Displaced identities
Exiled photographers of the 1930s and 1940s
Adaptation and reflexivity
Photographers and the agency of adaptation
Jazz, Jews, and Jewish photography
II. Jazz and exilic vision
The exile as outsider
Clemens Kalischer
Otto Hess and Henry Ries
The exile as portraitist
Gjon Mili
Fred Plaut
Notes
10 Looking Back, Looking Forward
Jazz Photography after 1960
Jazz, photography, and photographers after 1960
Looking forward, looking back
Notes
Conclusion: Herb Snitzer, Pops (1960)
Notes
Appendix Agency in Jazz Photography
I. Photography and agency
The case for photographic agency
A technology of self
Photographic agency in practice
II. Tradition, affinity, and subjectivity
Reflexivity, identity, and photographic practice
III. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Personal interviews and correspondence
Photographic archives consulted
Other sources
Index
Back Cover
