In this historic collection of black and white photographs, Jimmy Katz captures the legendary elder statesmen and the young lions of jazz as they perform in the recording studios, jazz clubs and streets of New York City, a city whose rhythms and energies explode within each frame.  

 

     For the past twenty years, Katz’s work for major recording companies (300 recording projects) and jazz magazines (100 covers) gave him unprecedented access to every significant artist in the New York area where he developed his own personal style, a combination of formal aesthetic and improvisatory camera work.  Unique to his style, he has worked with large and medium format film cameras in situations where generations of photographers have relied on smaller formats.   The resulting portraits have a remarkable sharp detail and creamy palate while maintaining the spontaneous and intimate quality of working in smaller formats.  Herman Leonard called him the best working jazz photographer today and legendary record producer Michael Cuscuna writes, "His style is as identifiable as Armstrong’s tone on trumpet or Coltrane’s sound on tenor sax.” His photographs define jazz in the modern era.

 

    Celebrated throughout the jazz world, Katz received the 2006 Award for Photography from the Jazz Journalists Association, following such prestigious winners as Herman Leonard, William Gottlieb and William Claxton.  He is the most featured contemporary photographer in Ken Burns’ documentary film Jazz in America, for PBS, and in the accompanying book.  Work in this exhibition are included in his three books on jazz, Jazz Katz, Blue Note Photography and Joe Lovano: The Cat With the Hat.