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Eugene Smith, 1965

at the window of his loft/darkroom...821 6th Avenue, Manhattan

Photographer unknown

#w eugene smith #eugene smith #jazz loft

#151 Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith (2015)

Director: Sarah Fishko

United States

During the movie a comment is made as to whether photography can change the world. It was treated as a naïve, romantic, basically absurd premise, and not worth much thought. This struck me as odd, mainly because I didn’t consider it a questionable or absurd premise at all – I thought it already had changed the world.

This is an excellent documentary on W. Eugene Smith the famous 20th century photographer, and his studio space at 821, 6th Ave in New York’s Flower District. From his window Smith began recording the world outside, the ever changing routine of the city as a kind of existential theater. Soon the recording began to involve sound recordings of just about every strata of daily life, radio broadcasts, ambient noise, conversations from visitors and jazz. The building was home to a number of underground creatives in the 1950’s, and became one of the go-to spots that hosted all night improvisational jam sessions by what was to become the pantheon of America’s jazz giants. Smith was there due to his long / obsessive hours in photographic darkroom production, and with recorder in tow, became the fly on the wall to a critical part of post war American musical creative subculture. Any lover of jazz, the Beat era and musical history will enjoy this documentary. It’s a rather gritty portrayal of the Benzedrine fueled jazz subculture that was formative to America’s modern identity, as the world emerged from World War II.

Smith became the chronicler of America during this time, and was a prominent photographer of American life mid twentieth century. His loft studio was where he spent uncountable obsessive hours in the dark room and gradually packed the space and walls with thousands of photos, ephemera and the latest recording equipment. Through this kind of artistic hoarding is revealed the frenetic life of the famous photographer, and the documenting of late night jam sessions that lasted through the night as musicians stumbled home in the early dawn hours, some just kept on playing. The recordings catch the marathon improv sessions that ushered in a new musical idiom.

This is a good film that catches a rare glimpse of a critical time in American culture and in American musical history. It’s a world that is still very much a tactile place – a black and white, photographic world not overcome by electronic mediation and the omnipresent reality of the screen. It’s also an expose on loneliness. There was a lot of disillusion and anguish in the 1950’s. Despite the whitewashing of the infant television medium, there was a swath of American culture, hidden in the dark that orbited the realities of racism, homosexuality, drug –use, and a wholesale rejection of mainstream culture. There was a price to be paid for being the outsider in America. For a land that espouses freedom, there is an obvious and heavy weight of conformity that these artists of this era had to react against. This is part of what it meant to be modern –one had to be outside the norm, a bit rebellious, a bit caustic and confrontational, but above all, new and innovative.

There in the midst of this strung out, late night, amphetamine fueled, booze toppling landscape was W. Eugene Smith, camera in hand, recorder in the hallway, quietly observing at the back of the dingy loft. The result? A fascinating fly on the wall perspective of the horn blaring turning point in American history.

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#jazz history #jazz loft #thelonious monk #w. eugene smith

The Loft Window [1957-1964] by W. Eugene Smith from ‘The Jazz Loft According to W. Eugene Smith’

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Top: The Human Pincushion, Ronald C. Harrison, N.J., c.1962, Photo by Diane Arbus

Bottom: Diane Arbus in Gene Smith’s Loft, c.1963, Photo by Dave Heath

#Diane Arbus #Dave Heath #W. Eugene Smith #Gene Smith #jazz loft #1960s #black and white #portraits

Jazz Loft Documentary Preview: Thelonious Monk at Work

Okayplayer.com previews the documentary on photojournalist W. Eugene Smith’s loft, where many musicians gathered in the late ‘50s to jam and hang out. Smith shot hundreds of photos and recorded hours of tape, capturing a fertile and historic time in jazz in New York. One clip addresses Smith and his methodology and the other captures Thelonious Monk and Hall Overton working out the legendary Town Hall concert.

-Michael Cuscuna

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#Jazz Loft #New York jazz #classic jazz #Thelonious Monk #Eugene Smith

Documentary on New York's "Jazz Loft" Set to Premiere

The Jazz Loft According To W. Eugene Smith is a documentary on the tapes and photos of Gene Smith, a photographer whose loft was a hangout for the royalty of modern jazz. It’s where Monk and Hall Overton sketched out and later rehearsed the famed Town Hall Concert. Sam Stephenson has carefully catalogued and organized the holdings. WNYC is presenting a radio series from the hundreds of hours of recording made in Gene Smith’s Jazz Loft. Don’t miss the photo gallery.

-Michael Cuscuna

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