The Library recently acquired an important collection of photographs by William P. Gottlieb, a jazz columnist who shot some 1,500 portraits of more than 250 jazz musicians from 1938 to the late 1940s.
Mr. Gottlieb’s photographs have great appeal in the jazz world because they are not only what one critic called “very penetrating pictures of real people,” but they also seem to express the essence of jazz.
“His particular genius seems to have been portraiture,” said Jon Newsom, acting chief of the Music Division. “He got a sense of the character, the individual, he had a feel for what they were like.”
Added Bernard Reilly, head of the Curatorial Section of the Prints and Photographs Division, “He also worked at a particularly important period in jazz in the United States.”
The collection presents many major jazz musicians from the fertile 10-year period between 1938 and 1948, and includes earlier pioneers and stylists as well as the up-and-coming boppers, said Robert Bamberger, head of the Fuels and Minerals Section of the Environment and Natural Resources Division in the Congressional Research Service who also hosts a weekly jazz program, “Hot Jazz Saturday Night” on Washington public radio station WAMU, 88.5 FM.
