Fifty Years Ago
In 1960 photographer William Claxton accompanied German musicologist Joachim Berendt on a tour of the jazz hotspots of America. The result was their collaboration on Jazzlife, an illustrated catalogue of known and unknown jazz musicians in their own homes and clubs and streets, playing and picnicking. Many of the images, like this one, convey the mood of jazz as much as its people and places. Jazz juxtaposes symmetry and asymmetry, complexity and simplicity. Here the photograph is centered on the fake musicians on the billboard who pretend to perform for us. Yet the white car rushes by, without pause. Claxton, not yet famous for his portraits of Chet Baker and other stars, makes us see the ironies in the layered image, but gently. Maybe there’s some metaphor here about rural America, its contradictory representations, and the importance of paying attention to them, but that’s less important than the constants we see everywhere: a few straight white lines, a flat land, and a road going somewhere. This image is still, soundless, and deceptively simple. That billboard may still be there; that blurred car is still in motion, fifty years later.
In: contemporary, music, photography · Tagged with: JazzLife, New Orleans, William Claxton