Eye Magazine

Jazz lives most happily in venues in which drink is served, and in which talking during the performance is accepted. If not too deep in conversation, the audience will applaud after solos, as well as at the conclusion of a piece. The musicians may play with a drink nearby; even – in the old days – a cigarette. Such informality tolerates the intrusion of a photographer at the side of the podium.

Jazz is a photogenic art. Its defining instrument, the tenor saxophone, is in itself an object of wonder: so shiny, with such curves. Then there are the musicians: young men in sharp suits, old men with lined faces, or ravaged divas . . .