Joel S Feigenson

Being surrounded by images of jazz musicians while listening to their music is a transcendent experience, particularly when you have had the opportunity to meet and talk with the artists. We hope to pass on some of our excitement by presenting our jazz photography series. An excerpt from a recent interchange with a well known contemporary jazz pianist conveys our photographic philosophy: "I started off my jazz collection with photorealistic images. Since most jazz photographs are black & white images, I had hoped that adding color would make the images more interesting. I soon discovered that sometimes color actually makes images less involving. Then I discovered that to see the real flavor of musicians playing music, you had to get rid of some of the superfluous information and simplify images, and that allowed you to hear the melody buried beneath the cacophony. So I started producing a type of “color watercolor image” which often helps capture the moment better then “analogue photorealistic images”. In the picture of you at Litchfield, you see you, that amazing look on your face, the piano, and that hand in the air which is going to do something really wicked and interesting when it lands on the keys. You don’t need to be distracted by anything else that just takes away from the moment. Some images don’t lend themselves to this treatment. The picture of [one of your sidemen] was better as a straight-on shot.”

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