Here’s Looking At Picture Books, Kid

On the Jazzhouse web site, W. Royal Stokes posts a valuable column recommending recent jazz, blues and pop photography and art books. It is an extensive list, just in time for Christmas. Stokes gives each book a thorough paragraph of review and a link to an online source for purchase. Here is some of what he writes about Hank O’Neal’s Ghosts of Harlem, a recent Doug’s Pick:

That he shot them with an ancient wooden view camera, setting up lights, inserting a plate, and throwing a cloth over his head and the instrument (shades of Matthew Brady!) says much about his determination to capture that “moment of truth” in the best possible light. Which he did in image after image.

I was surprised and pleased to find that Mr. Stokes included Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond despite its being a biography, not a picture book. Now I am even happier that the publisher insisted on lots of photographs.