WILLIAM P. GOTTLIEB

Perfection in the paradox

Gottlieb, known as "Mr. Jazz", became interested in music when a piece of bad meat caused him a trichinosis and forced him to a tedious convalescence that he mitigated with jazz records and magazines. Despite this bad start, his relationship with twentieth-century music is one of the most productive and celebrated in the world of photography.


William P. Gottlieb's destiny was not to be a photographer. He was set up with a job at the Washington Post, without providing any merit, and ended up in the Publications section. To earn some extra money, he suggested to the editor the possibility of a section of jazz photographs. He had to buy his own camera, a Speed Graphic, the same that the journalists used all the time. Although he wanted to write he became a photographer and still now, in his way, is established as the standard of what we today would call "a typical photograph of jazz."

William P. Gottlieb was a perfectionist. Having to pay his own films and magnesium flash lamps, which were single-use, put all the care in the world to portray the right time. He knew the musicians, their tics and their ways, so just he had to put a little patience to find the ideal time to take a picture, two at most per night. In order not to waste this gift negative his photos were born as ideal (few, but perfect) that have become essential.

William P. Gottlieb came to own his own jazz column, his own radio show, and was known as the organizer of dance competitions (of swing, of course) and jam sessions where the best musicians met, and he lived the best time of jazz, 40 and 50. However, suddenly he left. He went from being the gold standard in the jazz world in black and white to engage in educational films. He continued with photography, but never returned to jazz. Even today nobody knows why. Fortunately, in 1995 the Library of Congress of the United States acquired 1600 Gottlieb negatives and slides, as well as framed photos and contact strips with the help of Ira & Leonore S. Gershwin Fund. They are available on the Library website for American Memory , and since this summer at Flickr. I cannot think of a better way to remember and to inspire photographers to come.

Everything around him is paradoxical and, however, perfect, as if everything would have been to arrive by chance, take a single image and check that it was a masterpiece.

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Photographs:

* Top: Gottlieb with his Speed Graphic, July 1997 (photo by Jim Higgins)

** The best photo of Billie Holiday made by Gottlieb at Downbeat, New York, February 1947.

*** Django Reinhardt in the New York club called Aquarium, November 1946

**** Spectacular photo of Sidney Bechet. Behind are Freddie Moore, Lloyd Phillips, and Bob Wilber. Taken at Jimmy Ryan's Club, New York, June 1947.