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Claxton's
photographs
capture the
jazz spirit
JAZZ:

WILLIAM

CLAXTON

At Presentation House until April
2. For more information see Time
Out.

Jazz is made of subtle shadings of colour and inflection,
brought forth from the minds
and fingers of a remarkable
set of strongly individualistic
characters. and William Claxton is one of its finest practi-

Visual Arts,
REVIEW
tioners. Only he doesn't blow
a horn or finger a piano. His
instrument is the camera. and
for 10 years, from 1953 until
1963, he was one of the visual artists who defined the
look of jazz with an extraordinary string of insightful
and personalized photographs,
many of which are now on
display at North Vancouver's •
Presentation House gallery.
As a long-time jazz aficionado, I initially found the
most striking element of the
Claxton show to be its familiarity. I've been living, unknowingly, with a number of
his best shots for a long time:
a dapper Hampton Hawes, the
living embodiment
of mysterioso, on ~he cover of his
second
trio outing;
Lee
Konitz and Warne Marsh looking unusually
boyish and
playful on their Atlantic duet
record; Barney Kessel, Ray
Brown, and Shelley Manne
cavorting 'round a maypole
on one of their
"pollwinners"
sessions;
a studious Ornette Coleman cradling his plastic alto sax on
the cover of The Shape of
Jazz to Come. These images,
and many more-some
uncredited, other simply absorbed
unthinkingly-define. for me. that period
when jazz was evolving out
of bebop into its current
wonderful complexity.
Seeing them
larger.
wellprinted, framed, and \it with
gallery lights is like coming
across a new side of an old
friend ·s talents.
Without the music to divert one's attention from the
visuals, these photographs
still sing, swing, and radiate
hip. The crabwise curl of
pianist
Carl Perkins·
left
hand is suitably suggestive
of the artist's technical unorthodoxy (he'd pluck out additional bass notes with his
elbow) and his fresh approach to the keyboard. Art
Pepper, sax in hand. slogging up a shockingly rural
L.A. hillside, evokes an understanding of the musician's
continual
quest for emotional honesty and artistic
improvement. The half-smile
on Thelonious
Monk's lips
belies the physical solidity of
the great composer's bulk. _

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awareness of the powers of
shadow and light. whether
natural or artificially manipulated. But more than that.
they're full of unforced refer-·
ences to the lives and music
of their subjects.
The greatest photographers
always seem at once in love
with and ever-so-slightly
removed from their subjects.
Claxton has this quality. He
approaches these jazz musicians, complex and often inward-looking men · and women, with the penetrating
insight of a greal: analyst:
waiting for that light111:1g
moment
wh.,:n, u1eir ·.•cfences down. the.·u
!Pt a
glimpse of their in-,,e, world
reveal itself through their
public face.
His posed shots are vital;
his action snaps put the
viewer in the club, even on
the bandstand, with the intimacy of a part{cipant. The
. ungainly dynamism of Dinah
Washington; Billie Holiday's
ruined, tragic beauty; John
Coltrane's matadorial determination as he mounts the
stairs on the way to one of
his Newport
festival
triumphs-they
are all captured and made vivid for
posterity.
Claxton didn't just shoot
portraits: his concern was
with the whole jazz milieu.
the world that spawned those
wonderful sounds, and some
of the street scenes are as
evocative of particular periods in jazz history as any of
his famous shots of the stars.
But even in these shots, the
human element stands out. I
don't think I'll ever forget his
4 a.m., midsummer
shot of
the Birdland nightclub doorway-not
for the strange
light or the low-rise landscape. but for the gaze of that
anonymous
musical aspirant, nodding on his feet, using a saxophone for a cane.
gaunt, and a million miles
away from the Manhattan
dawn.
Like jazz, William Claxton's
photographs cover the whole
range of human emotions.
Like jazz, they speak of
specific
historical
times
without seeming dated or
cliched. Like jazz, they use
simple ingredients to evoke
complex emotional and intellectual
ponderings.
Like
jazz. they'll give back whatever thought and time you
invest in them.
Incidentally, Claxton's exhibition is underscored
by
classic jazz recordings from
performance artist Eric Metcalfe's collection. For even
more multi-media input, the
Coastal Jazz and Blues Society has arranged a series of
Sunday evening gallery concerts featuring some of Vancouver's
leading
creative
musicians.
This week the
eclectic Lunar Adventures
explore their probing mix of
Celtic harmolodicism; they'll
be followed on March 19 by
Bruce Freedman's Chief Feature quartet, which will mix
up traditional and innovative
sounds with its usual intensity . □ Alex Varty