Phat's Bouillabaisse: Photography In Music: Francis Wolff, Pt. 1

Photographer Francis Wolff

Francis Wolff was a professional photographer in Berlin when in 1939 he caught the last ship from Germany to America. He joined his boyhood friend, Alfred Lion, and together they built Blue Note Records into one of the great labels in jazz history. Wolff photographed almost every Blue Note Session from 1939 to 1967. He died in 1971 after having shot thousands of images, many of which have been established as classics. Francis Wolff never thought of his work as important or immortal, but merely as a resource for Blue Note to utilize for cover art. He is now widely recognized as one of the few great artists of jazz photography.