William P. Gottlieb

ARTIST

Art at the Plaza

William P. Gottlieb - "Frank Sinatra"

William Paul Gottlieb (1917–2006) was an American photographer, journalist, and author, best known for his iconic black-and-white portraits of the giants of jazz during the so-called Golden Age of Jazz in the 1930s and 1940s. William was a self-taught photographer and his portraits combine technical skill with a sensitive presence – and today constitute an invaluable visual treasure in the history of jazz.

Background & photography

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Gottlieb studied economics at Lehigh University, where he also wrote for the student newspaper before becoming a jazz columnist for The Washington Post – an assignment in which he began taking the photographs himself, since the newspaper did not want to pay for a photographer.
His photographs document the jazz scene in New York and Washington, D.C., between 1938 and 1948, and have become central to the visual history of jazz.

Notable subjects

Gottlieb portrayed many of the most prominent names in jazz – among them Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, and Thelonious Monk.
His photographs are among the most reproduced from the golden age of jazz and have become a visual iconography for the genre.

Publications & exhibitions

Gottlieb’s work was published in newspapers such as Down Beat, Record Changer and Saturday Review.
In 1979, he gathered his favourites in the photobook The Golden Age of Jazz, which was awarded the ASCAP Award and was printed in several editions.
His photographs are preserved permanently in the Library of Congress, have been exhibited at venues such as the National Portrait Gallery and Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and are used in documentaries, newspapers, and exhibitions worldwide.

Legacy

Gottlieb is considered to have captured the soul of jazz in a unique and widely appreciated way, and his images still help define how we remember and understand this cultural era.
Although he later left jazz photography behind, he continued to return to the scene sporadically, for example when he photographed Gerry Mulligan and other legends in the 1990s, often for Modern Photography.