Jazzlife [Jazz Life].

First Edition of William Claxton's Jazzlife; Inscribed by Him to Fellow Photographer Robert Frank

Jazzlife [Jazz Life].

CLAXTON, William and Berendt.

Item Number: 5374

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. Association copy, inscribed on the half-title page to photographer Robert Frank, “For Robert with my best wishes! William Claxton.” With Robert Frank’s signature on the upper right hand corner. Near fine in a very good dust jacket with some small closed tears. A wonderful association copy linking these two great photographers of the twentieth century.

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.

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