William Claxton (photographer)
William Claxton ( born October 12, 1927 in Pasadena, California, † October 11, 2008 in Los Angeles ) was an American photographer. With impressive photo portraits of jazz musicians he gave the Jazz more popularity.
Life
Claxton pulled even as a psychology student at UCLA in Los Angeles with the camera by jazz clubs. In 1952, he met at "The Haig " in Los Angeles Richard Bock at photographs of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet for his newly formed Pacific Jazz label, and was hired by this as a photographer for the album covers of the label. These recordings made him famous. Especially the portraits of the young Chet Baker had later after influential. Claxton also worked as a fashion photographer and was in the 1960s, the preferred photographer of Steve McQueen, whom he met during the 1962 filming of " Love with the proper stranger ". 1959/1960, he traveled with Joachim -Ernst Berendt by the U.S. to jazz musicians and street scenes, inter alia, in New Orleans, Kansas City, New York, St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco to photograph, from which the book " Jazz Life "was born. At the time the book was published in an edition of nearly 2 million copies and is now a sought-after collector pieces.
His photographs appeared in magazines such as Life, Paris Match, and Vogue.
Claxton was married from 1960 with the ex- model Peggy Moffitt. Together with her he works repeatedly for the designer Rudi Gernreich. Their son Christopher was born in 1973. The family lived in Beverly Hills.
1956 dedicated to him Shorty Rogers his composition " Clickin with Clax " Al Cohn and his "Sound Claxton ".
Claxton died shortly before his 81st birthday in a hospital in Los Angeles of heart failure and left behind his wife Peggy Moffitt, his son Christopher and his sister Colleen Lewis.
Works
- Jazz West Coast. Pacific Jazz 1955; Bijitsu Shuppan - Sha, Tokyo 1993; picture book
- By Joachim- Ernst Berendt: Jazz Life. Burda Druck and Verlag, Offenburg 1961; Advanced English edition
- Jazz. Foreword by Leonard Feather. Stemmle Edition 1996, ISBN 0811813517
- Young Chet - a photographic memory of legendary jazzman Chet Baker. Schirmer Mosel, Munich 1993, new edition 2006, ISBN 3888147980
- Claxography - The Art of Jazz Photography. Nieswand Verlag, Kiel 1995, ISBN 3926048670 (from the Book Art Foundation awarded as "one of the most beautiful German books " )
- Laugh- Portraits of the Greatest Comedians and the stories They tell eachother. William Morrow, New York 1999
- Jazz lakes. Benedikt Taschen Verlag, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3822878685 ( Foreword by Don Heckman )
- Jazz Postcards. Benedikt Taschen Verlag 1998
- Photographic Memory. Powerhouse Books, 2002, ISBN 1576870855, (photos of actors like Dennis Hopper and other celebrities such as Truman Capote, Salvador Dali )
- Jazz Life. A Journey Across America. Benedikt Taschen Verlag, Cologne, 2005, ISBN 3822849707 (including photos of Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dave Brubeck, Ella Fitzgerald, Charles Mingus )
- Steve McQueen. Taschen Verlag, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3822831174
Quote
"Most of the jazz photography before me Showed sweaty musicians with shiny faces in dark, smoky little bars. That was jazz to most people. But being on the West Coast, I wanted to bring out the factthat musicians were living in a very health conscious environment. So I purposely put them on the beach or in the mountains or on the road in Their convertibles. "
Movies
- Jazz lakes - the life and times of William Claxton. Documentary, Germany, USA, 2001, directed by Julian Benedikt, meetings:
- Jazz for the eyes. The photographs of William Claxton. TV Feature, Germany, 2005, about 7 minutes, Production ZDF, aspects, Broadcast: September 23, 2005, Summary of the ZDF