Sight Readings

Photographers and American Jazz, 1900-60

Alan John Ainsworth (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

472 Seiten

2022
Intellect Books (Verlag)
978-1-78938-421-5 (ISBN)

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Jazz photography has attracted increasing attention in recent years. Photographs of musicians are popular with enthusiasts, while historians and critics are keen to incorporate photographs as illustrations. Yet there has been little interrogation of these photographs and it is noticeable that what has become known as the jazz photography 'tradition' is dominated by a small number of well-known photographers and 'iconic' images.

Many photographers, including African American photojournalists, studio photographers, early twentieth-century émigrés, the Jewish exiles of the 1930s and vernacular snapshots are frequently overlooked. Drawing on ideas from contemporary photographic theory supported by extensive original archival research, Sight Readings is a thorough exploration of twentieth century jazz photography, and it includes discussions of jazz as a visual subject, its attraction to different types of photographers and offers analysis of why and how they approached the subject in the way they did.

One of the remarkable things about this book is its movement back and forth between detailed archive research, the empirical documentation of photographers, their techniques, working practices, equipment etc., and cultural theory, the sophisticated discussion of aesthetics, cultural sociology, the politics of identity, etc. The result is both a fine scholarly achievement and an engaging labour of love.

Alan John Ainsworth is an independent scholar based in Edinburgh. He researches and writes on jazz, jazz photography, the history of photography, architecture, and design.

Contents

Foreword by Darius Brubeck

Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Approaching jazz photography

Chapter 1: Jazz photography and photographers 1900-1960

Chapter 2: Jazz writing and the photographic image

Chapter 3: The Jazz image as document

Chapter 4: Expression in the jazz image

Chapter 5: The Play of Gestures: Jazz in the Studio

Chapter 6: Document and realism: early African American jazz photography

Chapter 7: Expressive realism in African American photography

Chapter 8: Authenticity and art: ‘New generation’ white photography

Chapter 9: Interrogating jazz: exiles and Jewish photography

Chapter 10: Looking forward, looking back: Jazz photography after 1960

Conclusion: Herb Snitzer, Pops (1960)

Appendix: Photographic agency and jazz photography

Bibliography

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	22.11.2021
Zusatzinfo	135 Halftones, duotone
Sprache	englisch
Maße	170 x 244 mm
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Fotokunst
	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik ► Jazz / Blues
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
ISBN-10	1-78938-421-4 / 1789384214
ISBN-13	978-1-78938-421-5 / 9781789384215
Zustand	Neuware