The Golden Age of Jazz

William Gottlieb stumbled onto photography by default. As a young reporter covering jazz during the 1930s and 1940s, he discovered that the Washington Post couldn't be bothered to dispatch a staff photographer. Gottlieb took to lugging along his Speed Graphic and a generous supply of flashbulbs, and as he interviewed his subjects he took pictures of them as well--brilliant pictures, in fact. Many have become canonical images: who can think of Billie Holiday, for example, without visualizing Gottlieb's famous head shot? Likewise, his whimsical photos of Dizzy Gillespie have become bebop icons. Yet his group portraits are even richer, suggesting miniature narratives and then leaving it to the viewer to provide the ending. (Which of Ellington's sidemen, I want to know, won that poker game so assiduously witnessed by Django Reinhardt?) The Golden Age of Jazz collects more than 200 of these gems, along with an informative text by the photographer, and it's hard to imagine a better source of visual delights for a jazz fan.