Book Review: “The Color of Jazz” by Pete Turner

I just got my copy of Pete Turner’s, “The Color of Jazz,” published by Rizzoli. Turner’s super-graphic, blazing-color images influenced my generation perhaps as heavily as Ernst Haas. The book is spectacularly printed and includes all the famous CTI jazz album covers by musicians that influenced my musician peers as profoundly. Jazz and photography is often associated and the images here — though often ignored in stuffy photography history books — are absolutely classic, as modern today as they were in the seventies. The captions include all-too-brief recaps of the music and photographic processes that Turner applied to create his perfect accompaniment to some of the greatest jazz ever played. Note that no technical notes are included and that many of the images are published in Turner’s early (and rare) book, “Photographs,” and in his recent, “African Journeys.” Highly recommended.

Photo Book Review: “Klein+Paris”

William Klein is one of my favorite photogs. I was weened on his early books rendering great cities, including “Tokyo,” “Moscow,” and “New York.” But his recent book (which I got for Christmas from a friend) is astonishingly dissapointing. Its inviting large format had me salivating as I opened to its first page and learned that Klein used 35mm Leicas and film for the entire project. I was ready to be transported to new photographic territory by a master of street photography. But after a few moments I realized that in this case, Klein+Paris = utter monotony. I was aghast. How could this be? I gave the book to a good friend for another impression. After a moment she said, “It’s giving me a headache, can I stop now?”

While asking for forgiveness from the photography Gods, I must report that Klein’s book — which is filled with ugly surging crowds of Parisians — is mortifying. It’s sinister, coarse, with little to assist the viewer glean more than affirmation of the photographer’s trechant style. There is little sublety here, though one can count on Klein to be in-close and probing. The curse of the book is that he’s probing from the first to the final page. Great photo books pull us in by the hand, but here we are simply clubbed, and soon want to flee. Oddly, Klein’s earlier (now 40-year-old) city books are far more innovative and gratifying.

Klein says he was reluctant to do a book about Paris because he has lived there for so long and is so close to the subject matter. Yet the shots here don’t tell us he’s close to the Parisians, beyond physical nearness. Yes, Parisians are vulnerable and sometimes ugly like the rest of us, but does an expensive photo book have to drag them through the detritus? As my friend continued: “People are ugly. They make ugly things and they do ugly things. This is really an ugly side of Paris.”

I photographed in Paris two years ago, about the time Klein’s book was published. Even in the dead of winter, the city exuded a poetic evanescence. While Klein offers a few memorable shots in this collection, and some interesting emblematic “travel” shots at the very end, the overarching effect is stultifying and unrewarding. I will not likely look at the book again…which is a tragedy. Klein’s early books now sell for over $500 to collectors and one would have liked to own of new Klein to curl up with for the new year. We count on the Klein’s of the world to take us to new terrain, but this time, we are repulsed by a brusque and invasive representation of a great city and its inhabitants.

Please provide your comments about this book, as I would love to be proven wrong!

Thanks,

Chris Engholm

Dispatches from a Navajo Pow Wow

Anticipating the final days of a memorable year, I packed up the van today and headed east on Interstate 10, and then north on California Route 95 as darkness fell upon the rippled sands of the Mojave Valley. I located a surprisingly livable hotel room around 10pm in gusty Needles, California. The plan is to skirt the Grand Canyon on Route 64 after lunch and enter the Navajo Indian Reservation by sunset.

The project is a continuing one, called A Gathering of Nations, and depicts the wonderful dance, drumming, and ceremonial clothing of the Indian pow wow. (I will post photos soon here and on our website.)

This pow wow is to take place in the tiny Navajo town of Shonto in the northeastern corner of the reservation. The town lies at the western terminus of Black Mesa off route 160, not far from the spectacular flaming buttes of Monument Valley. The pow wow is scheduled for Sunday and Monday—New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day—and is to take place in the town gymnasium. I expect to be one of the few out-of-towner’s in attendance as the daytime temperature yesterday was 39 degrees and the low was 1 degree. However, I’m hoping that the locals allow me good access to the event and perhaps we make some friends and bring home some quality photography. If nothing else, it will be an intriguing glimpse into reservation life.

Good tidings for the new year!

Chris Engholm