I recently came across a set of over 1,600 images captured by William P. Gottlieb from the 1930's and 1940's. Gottlieb was a notable journalist and self-taught photographer who covered the jazz scene and musicians in it during the period recognized as the "Golden Age of Jazz". Covering a ten year period, from 1938 to 1948, Gottlieb captured these images while following musicians in the New York City and Washington D.C.
Gottlieb was born in January of 1917 in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn and grew up in Bound Brook, New Jersey. He began his career as a journalist while attending Lehigh University where he wrote for the weekly campus newspaper and became the editor-in-chief of the The Lehigh Review. During Gottlieb's last year of college, he began writing a weekly jazz column for the Washington Post. From there, Gottlieb also wrote for Down Beat Magazine, The Record Changer, The Saturday Review, and Collier's.
The list of jazz musicians that Gottlieb followed and captured in images is extensive. Some of the more prominent personalities included Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Earl Hines, Jo Stafford, Thelonious Monk, Stan Kenton, Ray McKinley, Benny Goodman, Les Paul, and Ella Fitzgerald. From candid moments to street scenes to performances on stage, Gottlieb documented this period in time with an in the moment and intimacy rarely seen.
Gottlieb stopped photographing jazz musicians in 1948. In 2006, Gottlieb suffered a stroke and passed away in April of that year from complications. Following his wishes, the images in this collection entered the public domain on February 16, 2010. They were made public by the Library of Congress (LOC) and can be viewed directly at the LOC's web site or the LOC's Flickr feed/portfolio.
These timeless images are snapshots of our past. They are venues and moments that are gone, but still live in our collective consciousness. Gottlieb's images are the vision and product of self self-taught photographer and creative. They are truly an impressive legacy.
Enjoy!!
