CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 12/19/2025

'Lisette Model: The Jazz Pictures' reclaims history

Featured photograph—of jazz legends Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton performing at Basin Street East, New York City (c. 1954–55)—is reproduced from the remarkable new release, Lisette Model: The Jazz Pictures. A legendary collection of photographs made over a decade during which the photographer, a Jewish Austrian woman who had emigrated to America to escape the Nazis, immersed herself in America’s sizzling, mostly Black jazz scene, these pictures were originally slated to be published alongside an essay by Langston Hughes. When the FBI placed Model on its National Security Watchlist due to her purported connections to the Communist Party, the project was shelved. And now, thanks to the exacting scholarship of photography historian Audrey Sands, this project has been fully brought to light for the first time. Published by Eakins Press Foundation, the critically-acclaimed photobook features more than 300 duotone images and 25 color reproductions, alongside Langston Hughes’ unpublished essay and original texts by Sands and jazz historian Loren Schoenberg. Clothbound with tipped on cover image, it’s one of our top Staff Picks for the Photo Fanatic, 2025.

Photograph © Lisette Model Foundation, courtesy of Eakins Press Foundation/Lisette Model fonds, National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives