WILLIAM CLAXTON
The photographs of William Claxton define the essence of cool — his stunningly intimate images of icons like Frank Sinatra, Chet Baker and Bob Dylan combine technical innovation and an unerring sense of the moment to forge a singular aesthetic he defined as “jazz for the eyes.”
By age 12, he regularly took the bus to downtown Los Angeles to attend jazz performances at the Orpheum Theatre, armed with his Brownie box camera and wearing his father’s suit to avoid questions about his age. His earliest subjects included jazz icons Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker, the latter photographed during an impromptu breakfast-time shoot at the Claxton family’s La Cañada Flintridge home.
In 1952, while shooting Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker at the Haig Club, he met Richard Bock, founder of the fledgling Pacific Jazz imprint, who quickly hired him as the label’s art director and house photographer. During his time at Pacific Jazz, Claxton snapped and designed album covers at a rate of roughly one per week, in the process establishing the visual identity of the West Coast jazz movement. Where previous jazz photographers captured their subjects in the dark, smoky environs of nightclubs, Claxton capitalized on the sun and surf of southern California, posing artists in unorthodox outdoor settings to represent a new era in the music’s continued evolution.
