Photographs and Tapes of W. Eugene Smith from 821 Sixth Avenue, 19571965

W. Eugene Smith and Sam Stephenson

With aForeword byRobin D. G. Kelley

Reissue of an acclaimed collection of images from photographer W. Eugene Smiths time in a New York City loft among jazz musicians.

In 1957, Eugene Smith walked away from his longtime job atLifeand the home he shared with his wife and four children to move into a dilapidated, five-story loft building at 821 Sixth Avenue in New York Citys wholesale flower district. The loft was the late-night haunt of musicians, including some of the biggest names in jazzCharles Mingus, Zoot Sims, Bill Evans, and Thelonious Monk among them. Here, from 1957 to 1965, he made nearly 40,000 photographs and approximately 4,000 hours of recordings of musicians. Smith found solace in the chaotic, somnambulistic world of the loft and its artists, and he turned his documentary impulses away from work on his major Pittsburg photo essay and toward his new surroundings.

Smiths Jazz Loft Project has been legendary in the worlds of art, photography, and music for more than forty years, but until the publication of this book, no one had seen his extraordinary photographs or read any of the firsthand accounts of those who were there and lived to tell the tales.