by African American, Music
[Early African American Photography] [Music] Candid photographs of Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Jimmy Rushing, Ray Charles, Leroy Cooper, and Guy Lafitte at the Grand Prix du Disque de Jazz photographed by little documented African American photographer Eddy Wiggins. Paris, France. 1958. 5 silver gelatin photographs, measurements range from 7" x 9.5" - 8.5" x 10.75". Ink inscriptions identifying subjects on verso of three images. Two images with handwritten attribution to "E.H. Wiggins / Paris" and another with "photo d' Eddy Wiggins." The life and career of African American photographer Eddy Wiggins remains little explored despite the fact that he used his lens to document some of the most famous African American musicians and vocalists of the twentieth century. Photographs the 1958 Grand Prix du Disque de Jazz held in Paris, France, where African American jazz musicians were celebrated contrasting America's discriminatory viewpoints and regulations. This event was created by the Académie Charles Cros organization, which acts as the intermediate between recording musicians and government cultural policy makers, named after one of the pioneers of sound recording, Charles Cros. Photographs show Ella Fitzgerald dawning a fur lined evening gown being escorted by some Parisian men, Ray Charles and Leroy Cooper posed with their brass instruments, and Jimmy Rushing holding the grand award certificate surrounded by celebratory Parisians. According to records of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Wiggins was born in New Orleans in 1904, with other sources citing his birth in Mississippi. French author Gilles LeRoy's 2008 book Eddy Wiggins, Le Noir et le Blanc, provides some biographical background, indicating that Wiggins moved from New Orleans to Chicago as a young man hoping to escape the violence and racism of the south. He left Chicago in 1933 moving to Paris as a correspondent for the prominent African American newspaper The Chicago Defender. He then covered the Parisian jazz scene for the newly founded French jazz magazine Jazz Hot. Following World War II, he served as a photographer and jazz correspondent for several American magazines, working with some of the greatest artists of the time. His photographs depict the lives of legendary African American artists in Paris, including candid moments backstage in concert halls such as Paris's famed concert venue, L'Olympia. This archive acts as a testament to the growing cultural revolution Black people heralded through the arts amidst rapidly changing discrimination laws and racial policy.
(Inventory #: 20165)