Jazzlife [Jazz Life].

CLAXTON, William and Berendt.

$2,200.00

Item Number: 393

Offenburg: Burda Druck und Verlag, 1961.

First edition of Claxton’s seminal photobook on jazz. Quarto, original black cloth, pictorial front endpapers. Profusely illustrated in color and black and white. Presentation copy, inscribed by the photographer on the half-title page, “For _______, William Claxton.” Near fine in a very good dust jacket.

Newsweek has called Jazzlife "... surely the most thorough and imaginative visual record of American jazz at mid-century that we'll ever see." Claxton's work is a photographic depiction of jazz artists in the 1960's, most noted for its images of Chet Baker. He has photographed for Steve McQueen and other celebrities and models, and in 1967, he created the film Basic Black. It is credited as the first "fashion video" and is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.