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| The Sound I Saw: Improvisation on a Jazz Theme
     
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Hardcover
208 pages
Phaidon Press Inc.
Published 2001
Amazon.com
Let legendary photographer Roy DeCarava lead you through the dark, moody, and exciting world of New York jazz in the 1960s. Photographed 30 years ago and not published until now, The Sound I Saw is a saunter through a poignant period of New York musical history and life experience. Vacant lots and sweaty musicians dot a cultural landscape that looks as if it's going to burst at the seams. The beautiful black-and-white images simultaneously capture hard and luscious life in the city. Lonely figures abound, on park benches, street corners, stages, and subways. The music appears and strives to make intense connections with the surrounding world. A delirious trumpet player works so hard you can almost feel him move the camera. This beautiful coffee-table size book has one striking picture after another, each capturing heartfelt experiences of life in the great city. From jam sessions to candy stores, the streets of New York appear choreographed to reveal the depths of the human spirit. --J.P. Cohen
Book Description
This is the long-awaited publication of a moving masterwork by one of the greatest photographers of our time.
Conceived, designed, written and made by hand as a prototype by master photographer Roy DeCarava (b.1919) in the early 1960s yet unpublished for nearly half a century, The Sound I Saw has largely existed, until now, as a legend among the cognoscenti of the photography world. Presented as a stream of 196 soulfoul images interspersed with DeCarava's own evocative poetry, the book is, in its form and effect, the printed equivalent of jazz, "This is a book about people, about jazz, and about things. The Work between its covers tries to present images for the head and for the heart and, like its subject matter, is particular, subjective, and individual,' writes the author. DeCarava is a life-long New Yorker who from his immediate world creates images that transcend the specific to depict universal themes of joy, anticipation, pain and survival. Largely unpublished, he was first recognized for his images of daily life in Harlem (the subject of The Sweet Flypaper of Life, his 1955 collaboration with Harlem
Renaissance poet Langston Hughes) and portraits of musicians like Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. It is these two themesÑHarlem and jazzÑinterwoven and inseparable, that are the ostensible subject of the book. However, the seemingly casual yet deeply felt compositions and the deep, rich tones of DeCarava's photographs stir emotions that resonate far beyond one neighborhood and one era. |
The Sound I Saw: Improvisation on a Jazz Theme
Roy DeCarava |  |
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