Books &Music &Photography Entropy | 20 Mar 2010
The Jazz Loft Project
The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965
From 1957 to 1965 legendary photographer W. Eugene Smith made approximately 4,000 hours of recordings on 1,741 reel-to-reel tapes and nearly 40,000 photographs in a loft building in Manhattan’s wholesale flower district where major jazz musicians of the day gathered and played their music. Smith’s work has remained in archives until now. The Jazz Loft Project is dedicated to uncovering the stories behind this legendary moment in American Jazz cultural history.
Pl refer to the awe inspiring audio slide show of New York Times – here
Sam Stephenson discovered Smith’s jazz loft photographs and tapes eleven years ago and has spent the last seven years cataloging, archiving, selecting, and editing Smith’s materials for this book, as well as writing its introduction and the text interwoven throughout.
The photographs, transcribed conversations and belated memories collected in the remarkable The Jazz Loft Project: Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957-1965 can make you nostalgic for an era that you didn’t live through and for a social milieu that you never were part of…
The Jazz Loft Project: An Interview with Sam Stephenson
Explore Jazz Loft Project website here
on 20 Mar 2010 at 2:10 pm 1.Michele Roohani said …
What a beautiful post Ajay! If only those walls could talk…aside from the music, the conversations these people had while jamming or just between sessions would have been fascinating to hear.
Jazz is the only music I can never get tired; it is a perpetual blooming of beautiful sounds…
Thank you.