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The Jazz Loft Project

Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 1957–1965
By Sam Stephenson
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Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
In 1957, photographer W. Eugene Smith left his family and job at Life magazine to live in a rundown New York City loft, home to jazz legends like Charles Mingus, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, and Thelonious Monk. Over eight years, Smith captured nearly 40,000 photographs and 4,000 hours of recordings, documenting the rich, chaotic life of the jazz community in the Sixth Avenue loft. This reissue presents his extraordinary visuals and firsthand accounts, revealing a unique chapter in the history of jazz and photography.
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Format: Hardback
$7599
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The Jazz Loft Project appeals to jazz aficionados, photography lovers, historians of 20th-century New York City, and anyone fascinated by intimate cultural moments captured through art and sound.

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"Originally published by Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, with the participation of the Collection and W. Eugene Smith Archive at the Center for Creative Photography, The University of Arizona."

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Reissue of an acclaimed collection of images from photographer W. Eugene Smith’s time in a New York City loft among jazz musicians.

In 1957, Eugene Smith walked away from his longtime job at Life and the home he shared with his wife and four children to move into a dilapidated, five-story loft building at 821 Sixth Avenue in New York City’s wholesale flower district. The loft was the late-night haunt of musicians, including some of the biggest names in jazz—Charles Mingus, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, and Thelonious Monk among them. Here, from 1957 to 1965, he made nearly 40,000 photographs and approximately 4,000 hours of recordings of musicians. Smith found solace in the chaotic, somnambulistic world of the loft and its artists, and he turned his documentary impulses away from work on his major Pittsburg photo essay and toward his new surroundings.

Smith’s Jazz Loft Project has been legendary in the worlds of art, photography, and music for more than forty years, but until the publication of this book, no one had seen his extraordinary photographs or read any of the firsthand accounts of those who were there and lived to tell the tales.

Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

"Photos of the city offer a rare glimpse into a neighbourhood being itself when it thought no one was watching. Essential for jazz fans, photography enthusiasts, and New York history buffs." — Publishers Weekly

"An absolutely magnificent work that brings jazz to life like no other medium." — Ray Olson, Booklist

"Every obsessive deserves his own obsessive Boswell, and W. Eugene Smith has his in Stephenson." — Fred Kaplan, New York Magazine

"The most chaotic and soulful gift book this year; a singularly weird, vital and thrumming American document." — Dwight Garner, The New York Times

"A stunning cross of scholarly history and Smith's haunted photography." — Jesse Jarnow, The Village Voice

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780226824840

Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 27 June 2023

Country: United States

Imprint: University of Chicago Press

Edition: First Edition, Enlarged

Illustration: 225 halftones

Contributors:

  • Foreword by Robin D. G. Kelley
  • By W. Eugene Smith

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 25.0mm

Width: 241.0mm

Height: 279.0mm

Weight: 1674g

Pages: 288

Collections

Arts & Culture Non-Fiction Photography Books Sam Stephenson

About the Author

W. Eugene Smith (1918–78) was an American photographer who worked for Life from 1939 to 1954 and thereafter was affiliated with the Magnum photo agency. Several posthumous overviews of Smith’s work have been published, including The Big Book, a retrospective of his work as he designed it, and a biography, Let Truth Be the Prejudice: W. Eugene Smith, His Life and Photographs, by Ben Maddow. Sam Stephenson is a writer from North Carolina now based in College Station, TX. He is the author of a biography of Smith, Gene Smith’s Sink, as well as Dream Street: W. Eugene Smith’s Pittsburgh Project and The Jazz Loft Project: The Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue. He is also the ghostwriter of Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You, a forthcoming memoir by Lucinda Williams. In 2019, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship for his work in progress about the band Jane's Addiction.

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