The Jazz Image: Seeing Music through Herman Leonard's Photography

Typically, a photograph of a jazz musician has several formal prerequisites: black-and-white film, an urban setting in the mid-twentieth century, and a black man standing, playing, or sitting next to his instrument. That's the jazz archetype that photography created. Author K. Heather Pinson discovers how such a steadfast script developed visually and what this convention meant for the music.

Album covers, magazines, books, documentaries, art photographs, posters, and various other visual e...