Jazz Photographers Past and Present.

Jazz and photography have gone hand in hand practically from the day the first Blue Note was heard in New Orleans and the moment was captured by a George Eastman Kodak camera. Since then those early grainy images have been developed (no pun intended) to today's digital imagery. There's ne'er a major festival nor a gig in a pub that doesn't have some happy snapper (often me!) shooting at The Hip. When it comes to pros however, it's a different matter.

Those wonderful shots by William P. Gottlieb. personified jazz in the 1930's/40's. William Claxton just about made the 1950's onwards his own - the unforgeable shots of Art Pepper or Chet Baker told you almost as much about the subject as the music itself. 

These were Americans but there were also British photographers - David Redfern perhaps the most well known from these shores.

And locally too, Kaveh Emami has taken some stunning shots at the  Jazz Café including this one of Paul Gowland taken at Keith Crombie's wake at the Town Wall Pub.
The photo of Sarah Vaughan (above) was from the work of the legendary Toronto Photographer the late George Hoeffler. Hoeffler left behind some stunning, pre-digital, work which is available in poster form from Blue Sun Images. Check them out.
Lance