John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Roy DeCarava, the Kamoinge Workshop, and Newsweek Magazine, 1964

It took a riot to get Roy DeCarava on the cover of Newsweek magazine. And that's no joke. DeCarava wasn't throwing stones. He was a photographer -- a great one. By 1964, when Newsweek hired him for the first time, he had already established himself as one of America's most... Read more →

Funky Friday: Roy DeCarava on Photographing Jazz

I'm doing something a little different for today's Funky Friday -- words and pictures, rather than music. The other day, I stumbled across an wonderful 1990 interview that Ivor Miller conducted with the great Roy DeCarava, who was know for his photographs of jazz musicians (among many other things). What... Read more →

Roy DeCarava's Harlem

I'm writing a conference paper about a triumph that turned into a tragedy. The triumph was "A Harlem Famly," one of the most powerful photo-essays that Gordon Parks ever produced. When Life published it in 1968, it moved many of the magazine's readers to reach out to the troubled and... Read more →

Photobooks and Narrative: My (Slightly Flawed) Phonar List

Late last week, Jonathan Worth, who runs Phonar [fo-'när], a free and open undergraduate photography class, at Coventry University, in the UK, asked a number of writers and photographers to put together a list of photo books that are “notable/ inspiring/ seminal/ provocative, in [their] narrative structure/approach or perhaps in... Read more →

Happy Birthday, Dear John, Dear Coltrane

Anyone who's serious about music has pieces, composers, and musicians that he or she couldn't live without. I've got a short list. Handel's Messiah, Brahms' symphonies, Dvorak's Slavonic Dances, and Miles' births, blues, smiles, and brews are one it. So is everything that Duke, Strayhorn, and Beethoven ever wrote. John... Read more →

John Coltrane: The "Giant Steps" Solo, Transcribed & Animated

A link to this video showed up in my inbox, this afternoon. It's John Coltrane's monumental solo from his 1959 recording of "Giant Steps." The solo itself is magical, one of the most famous moments in the history of jazz. Now, Alberto Betancourt has both transcribed and animated it. The... Read more →