Southend Musicworks, 1991: Speed and Chiaroscuro

Relatively early in my life—mid-teens—I became one of that tiny minority bit hard and permanently by the jazz bug. Around 15 years later I came to semi-serious amateur, color-slide photography when I started traveling outside the Midwest. And in the '80s I began to take the camera, with that slow slide film, to some jazz performances. My results confirmed a statement I saw in a book of jazz images by David Spitzer, to the effect that when one is shooting moving objects in low light, the proportion of unsatisfactory shots to usable ones will be frustratingly high. This was true despite my advantage, provided by my long familiarity with the music being played, in anticipating the moment an artist would stop for an instant to take a breath and snapping in that instant.

Chance attendance at a truly great night at the 1986 Chicago Jazz Festival at the Petrillo Music Shell in Grant Park hooked me on that event for life. I noted with envy that the area at the foot of the stage was a photographers' pit, restricted to those who had obtained the necessary credentials. I had been doing some writing for jazz publications, so in 1987 and thereafter I obtained the requisite pass and, for the first time since I was a child, began using black-and-white print film. And in 1988 Kodak came out with T-MAX 3200. Incredibly fast. To obtain a sharply focused shot it was no longer necessary to try to anticipate the moment a bobbing and weaving saxophone soloist would stop to take a breath.

The essence of jazz is self-expression, and while it's probably true that that's a major motivation for most musicians of all genres, to me it's self-evident that there is much greater scope for it in jazz, and in other improvised musics, than in those in which the artists are playing purely from a written score.

Good jazz players will establish a foundation at the outset of their solos and gradually raise the level of intensity. I like to catch them at a climax of that process.

Unlike many of the photographers in the photo pit at the festival—and elsewhere—who rush to snap a player as soon as he begins soloing, I like to wait for a moment of maximum intensity—player's eyes tightly shut, his face in a grimace (in what would be taken as an expression of pain or grief if he didn't have that instrument in his mouth).

And while I've seen (and I hope taken) some very effective photographs in which a player's entire instrument is in the frame, I generally feel that more extreme closeups better capture the excitement and creativity of the music and have more impact.

Finally, I like the chiaroscuro effect of a player frontlighted against a black background. Those performances at the Chicago Jazz Festival that (1) occur after dark, (2) involve players standing close to the edge of the stage, and (3) bathe the soloist in a white—not red or blue—spotlight provide absolutely ideal conditions for getting this kind of shot.

Thus, it may surprise you that the three photos that comprise this tryptich were taken not at the festival but rather at a jam session following it one night in 1991, in a hot funky space about a mile away from the festival site. These uncropped shots, taken with a 200-mm lens, faithfully reflect how close I was able to get to the musicians, even closer than at the foot of the stage at the festival. So near to the player in the left panel of the tryptich that if I didn't tell you that's a trombone he's playing you might not be able to tell. And it's clear from the photographs that the lighting in that place yielded...