Cork Jazz Festival: Feel the jazz vibe at Chuck Stewart exhibition 

A feast for the eyes as well as the ears, St. Peter’s Church hosts the work of African American fine art photographer Chuck Stewart, writes Don O’Mahony

Cork Jazz Festival is undoubtedly about the music but a very special event running over the duration of the event pays tribute to the power of the image and its defining role in how we think about the music and the landmark albums it has produced.

Born in Henrietta, Texas in 1927, Chuck Stewart was there to capture the giants of jazz, from Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie to Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey and Miles Davis. He is perhaps most revered for being in the studio to document John Coltrane and his quartet featuring McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones record what many regard as one of the greatest statements in jazz, or any genre of music, A Love Supreme.

Working from 1955 to 1997, Stewart once remarked that “It’s probably easier to ask me whom haven’t I photographed then to tell you who I have.”

The exhibition at St Peters Church, titled “We Got the Jazz” promises to be a unique experience on a number of levels. As his daughter-in-law Kim Stewart points out, the usual practice for exhibitions of his photographs is to choose from 200 of his recognised as iconic images. However, with curator Brian “B+” Cross, an Irish photographer and filmmaker whose documentations of the American hip-hop scene — among others — over the past 30 years includes the much celebrated cover for DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing album, the net was cast wider.

Stewart pulled out 300 images, and over the course of five eight-hour days in Atlanta, Cross whittled them down to 40. Chuck’s black and white photography is exquisite and renowned, but Cross insisted that the show contain colour photographs. Remarkably, this show marks the first time his colour images have been exhibited.

“Chuck’s colour images have been seen on album covers but we’ve never had them displayed for exhibit,” says Kim, “so this is going to be interesting.”

Cross feels Chuck was always a colourist and wanted to reveal that side of him.

“Even going back to the 50’s, as early as there was colour film available he was shooting colour film. And a lot of the lighting experiments that he did were to do with colour. But so little of the colour stuff had been seen.

“Obviously I’m a photographer also, and I’m also a colourist. I think the colour work is incredible.”

“He was known for his black and white,” Kim points out. “It shows moodiness. It shows the humanity. It’s a really in-depth, intimate image of how he portrayed artists.

“He’s more inclined to colour,” she says of Cross, “so it would only be apropos for him to be part of this exhibit and select so many colour images to be seen at this exhibit.

“Now for me, I’m Like, ‘well, I don’t know’. You know, the black and whites are stunning, but the colours are just as brilliant. I think I’m more familiar with looking at black and whites day in, day out.”

Chuck worked for many of the great jazz labels, including Verve, Impulse!, Mercury and Chess and having shot over 2,000 album sleeves Cross feels he had been aware of Chuck’s work long before he realised who he was. However, the time he took note of Stewart was through his images of John Coltrane.

He observes: “Mostly Chuck is studio: both photo studio and music studio. It’s rare for him to be outside. The thing I would say is what makes his work so specific is there’s a kind of candour, there’s a kind of comfort zone that Chuck gets to with people where people seem relaxed in a way you won’t see in other photos.

“There’s a kind of searching that’s going on in Chuck’s work to get to the centre of where that person is. His camera finds a way to know those people in a way that we get to know those people.”

For his daughter-in-law the magic always happened in the dark room.

“Chuck did a lot of burning,” she reveals, sharing his techniques and citing a portrait of Billie Holiday as an example.

“What you notice is you don’t see a lot of distraction in Chuck’s images, so it’s all blackened out. Everything is blackened out. And this was a live performance. But you don’t see any of that. All you see is how the light is reflecting on one side of her face. But when you look at the negative that’s not what you see. He creates the picture in the dark room.”

Allied to the photographs, monuments of jazz history and visual artistry, this will be an interactive and immersive experience, inviting the viewer to take selfies, and discover further information through QR codes and a spotify playlist.

We Got the Jazz will give you the jazz! Check it out for yourself here

For more see  guinnesscorkjazz.com