Introduction

When I was young, a time when everything was cast in black and white, and before maturity brought shades of gray into my life, I fell in love. Not just once, but three times.

The first love affair was with music, a special kind of music. My ears suddenly seemed open to sounds that would stay with me through the next seventy years and more. I was in England, an all- American boy enjoying a two-year sojourn, challenged by the experience of attending an English school – short pants, blazer, school tie, beanie, and all the new customs and accents to be learned. It was there I learned to play piano by ear, and it was there that I first heard jazz – or swing music, as it was called. I heard it over the BBC radio, and the recordings were by people with unfamiliar names – Benny Goodman…Fats Waller.

Soon enough, I was back home, to find that my family had moved from Atlantic City, my birthplace, to New York City, where I arrived in early 1936, just in time to enroll in high school. Almost Immediately I picked up an old recording by Fats Waller at a used furniture store on the corner. As the saying goes, it was the start of something big.

The next object of my affections was – you guessed it - a girl. Again, neither the memory of that girl nor the intensity of my feelings ever quite left me. But this is not about her, so let’s move ahead a year or so to my third passion.

It happened during a weekend visit to an old school friend in Ventnor, next to Atlantic City. Frank had hardly greeted me when he proudly showed me his darkroom, which occupied part of the family basement. I knew next to nothing about cameras or the process of producing negatives or prints, but within an hour of my first exposure to how it was done, I was hooked.

So, you see, my story is centered around two loves, and wonder of wonders, these two loves are compatible! My life’s work has been in photography, from recording atomic bomb tests to documentary films, and along the way I discovered how to bring jazz and photography together so that I could savor them both. It became considerably more than a hobby.

It all started with something of a minor miracle, given my utter inexperience. The very first roll I exposed was at the New York Paramount Theatre on Times Square. With a brand new Argus camera I sat in an aisle seat in the fifth row, heart pounding as the thrilling sounds of Benny Goodman’s theme song, Let’s Dance, pierced the semi-darkness, and slowly there rose into view an array of silhouetted figures marked by tiny lights on music stands. I could hardly contain myself as the crowd around me roared in its enthusiasm. I tried desperately to recall what the photography magazines had said about exposing for stage shots. I must have remembered well, for the eight to ten frames I exposed came out perfectly. I still enjoy looking at one shot of Lionel Hampton and Goodman during one of Lionel’s solos.

Now over sixty-three years have passed, and like so many heart-beats, the clicks of countless exposures have vanished, but for each one there remains an image, a moment captured for all time, an image of a memory, if you will. It is my peculiar passion.

Many other photographers have traveled this path. I hope that each of them has known the joy of the music and the joy of the final print that has remained undimmed for me.

Duncan Schiedt
Pittsboro, Indiana