Rhetoric of the Jazz Studio Portrait

ABSTRACT This article explores the context and rhetoric of jazz studio portraiture between 1920–45. Often dismissed as publicity material, portraiture as a site of performative agency has been underestimated. These photographs were among the first conscious representations of jazz and tell us much about the emerging self-identity of jazz musicians. In a celebrity age exemplified by Hollywood glamor photography, portraiture was a key element in the negotiation with commercial entertainment and cultural modernity by both African American and white jazz musicians although the racialized entertainment discourse created sharp tensions for black players. Contrasted with the modernist photography emerging from the Hollywood studios however jazz portraits lacked the rhetorical certainty of celebrity discourse. The ambition of jazz portraiture to narrativize the place of jazz in relation to mass entertainment was consistently pulled between constructions of musical artistry and entertainment, between art and commerce, and its divorce from performance settings underscored these ambiguities. In providing scope for the performative agency of musicians, the rhetoric of jazz studio portraiture visualizes the complexities in the relationships between jazz and mainstream culture and undermines the simple antinomies often used to describe these relationships.