creators_name: McIntyre, Paul
creators_id: paul.mcintyre@dkit.ie
type: article
datestamp: 2014-10-21 09:25:47
lastmod: 2014-12-08 12:16:59
metadata_visibility: show
title: K. Heather Pinson, The Jazz Image: Seeing Music Through Herman Leonard’s Photography. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2010. 240 pp. ISBN 978- 1604734942 (hbk) £29.74.

ispublished: pub
subjects: subject_arts
subjects: subject_media
subjects: subject_music
full_text_status: public
keywords: K. Heather Pinson; Herman Leonard; Jazz music; Photography.
abstract: During the 1980s revival of the Herman Leonard jazz portfolio I bought three prints of his jazz photographs. Because of my ownership of these photographs I found this book enriching and informative in the author’s consideration of jazz and jazz culture through Leonard’s work. My interest was excited by the investigative contextualization of various cultural issues that the author associates with the topic in a fresh and authoritative approach. The study is extremely broad and uses an interdisciplinary approach to iconography; the author acknowledges this by stating that she has modelled her work on that of Ted Gioia, specifically in relation to his book The Imperfect Art (1988), and in relation to ‘society’s understanding of the jazz musician as a means to understand the other arts’ (p. 12). Structurally, the text is based on a two-part approach: the first two chapters focus on the jazz image, how it is constructed around the African-American male jazz musician and aligned with musical classicism and neoclassicism. In the second part, the final two chapters investigate how that neoclassical jazz image is mediated today and how it is highlighted recursively through experimental jazz styles.

date: 2013
date_type: published
publication: Jazz Research Journal
volume: 7
number: 1
publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd.
pagerange: 137-142
refereed: TRUE
issn: 1753-8645
official_url: http://www.equinoxpub.com/journals/index.php/JAZZ
citation:   McIntyre, Paul  (2013) K. Heather Pinson, The Jazz Image: Seeing Music Through Herman Leonard’s Photography. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2010. 240 pp. ISBN 978- 1604734942 (hbk) £29.74.  Jazz Research Journal, 7 (1).  pp. 137-142.  ISSN 1753-8645     
document_url: http://eprints.dkit.ie/380/1/Paul%20McIntyre.pdf