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Jazz Greats: Classic Photographs from the Bank of America Collection

Moments That Defined the Genre.

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Jazz Greats: Classic Photographs from the Bank of America Collection celebrates the legacy of singers, musicians, audiences, and artists who contributed to the cultural footprint of jazz.

Black-and-white portrait of Ella Fitzgerald in performance

Jazz Greats celebrates the magic that happens when a photographer captures a precise moment in a performing artist's life—on or off stage—and memorializes the joy of audience members as they participate in the making of music history.

Through many dynamic lenses, the collection highlights early jazz leaders and defining moments of cultural transformation during an era of social, economic, industrial, and political reckoning.

The exhibition is comprised of 31 photographs by 14 photographers that date from the 1920s to the 1980s. Almost all are gelatin silver prints made from negative film, which achieve a crystalline depth of field not seen in digital images.

  • Music Embodied

    See some of the most iconic jazz performers up close—including Miles Davis, John & Alice Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Eric Dolphy, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dizzy Gillespie.

  • Rhythm in Motion

    Explore the dialogue between jazz and modern dance, from dancers at the Savoy to Arthur Mitchell's Harlem School of Dance to the depth and excitement of Martha Graham's choreography.

  • Audiences Immersed

    Become a member of the crowd as prints in this collection turn a lens on communities and audiences that helped shape the genre from sidewalks, clubs, and dance halls.
Black-and-white photograph of the Apollo Theater marquee
Black-and-white photograph of musicians playing for their neighbors on the sidewalk
Black-and-white photograph of a man playing the cello while his wife leans on him

This exhibition is provided by Bank of America’s Art in Our Communities program.

Jazz Greats

Join us at the Wright and enter sacred spaces of jazz history—electric performances and intimate moments—through music and movement preserved in film.

An Introduction to Jazz Greats

Of all visual art media, photography is most often referred to as democratic in its accessibility—to photograph takers, makers, and viewers. There is some truth to that designation, especially today, when capturing a high-quality image is easy for most of us. However, the processes used to create the photographs on view in Jazz Greats: Classic Photographs from the Bank of America Collection were not nearly as simple. Almost all are gelatin silver prints made from negative film, a near-obsolete photography method displaced by digital technology. Although high-resolution digital images can offer striking results, the crystalline depth of field achieved with film is arguably unsurpassed. Beyond their material properties, the images in this exhibition reveal a variety of relationships between photographers and performers. Some present the photographer as an intimate in the scene pictured; others place the photographer with us in the audience. Because engaged artists left us valuable, historical records, pictured here are times past but not lost.

The images gathered for this exhibition offer more than an overview of music and movement captured with professional accuracy and acumen. In the early era of photography beginning in 1839, the year of the medium’s invention, photographs offered only a glimpse of reality. A glimpse that faithfully records what is before the lens, though, preserves something immeasurably more—an impression unique to each photographer. This selection of black-and-white prints spans three generations and speaks to the histories of individuals and occurrences, in front of and behind the camera.

Image Credits

Michael L. Abramson (American, 1948–2011)
Perv’s House, Dance, Chicago Southside, 1976
Gelatin silver print
Bank of America Collection 

Jonas Dovydenas (American, b. Lithuania, 1939)
Church Holiday Musicians, Chicago, 1968, from the Faces portfolio
Gelatin silver print
Bank of America Collection

William Gottlieb (American, 1917–2006)
Apollo, c. 1950
Gelatin silver print
Bank of America Collection

William Gottlieb (American, 1917–2006)
Django Reinhardt, c. 1950
Gelatin silver print
Bank of America Collection

William Gottlieb (American, 1917–2006)
Dizzy Gillespie, 52nd St., New York, N.Y., c. 1948
Gelatin silver print
Bank of America Collection

William Gottlieb (American, 1917–2006)
Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown, Milt (Milton) Jackson, and Timmie Rosenkrantz, Downbeat, New York, N.Y., 1947
Gelatin silver print
Bank of America Collection

Barbara Morgan (American, 1900–1992)
Martha Graham, El Penitente (Erick Hawkins Solo, “El Flagellante”), 1940
Gelatin silver print
Bank of America Collection

Barbara Morgan (American, 1900–1992)
Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham in Letter to the World – “Dear March, come in,” 1940
Gelatin silver print
Bank of America Collection

Gordon Parks (American, 1912–2006)
Music—That Lordly Power, 1993
Gelatin silver print
Bank of America Collection