NEW YORK, NY- During the 1950s, renowned photographer Jerry Dantzic captured the essence of New York: the musicians, showgirls, boxers, and the habitués of Coney Island, Chinatown, Broadway and other neighborhoods, as well as the city’s glamour.

On April 30, 1958, Dantzic photographed one of the few studio sessions between jazz greats Louis Armstrong and Lionel Hampton. The duo was part of an elite group of jazz musicians who were rehearsing for the Timex Jazz All-Star Jazz Show at the CBS Studios in New York City.

Opening April 23, 2009, “Timex All-Star Jazz Show 1958: Photographs by Jerry Dantzic” will showcase more than 30 photographs, as well as a video of the TV show and other materials related to it. “This exhibition highlights yet another facet of the career of Louis Armstrong, this time in partnership with Kentucky native Lionel Hampton,” says Ogden’s Chief Curator David Houston. The exhibition will be on view until July 19, 2009.

This Timex All-Star Jazz Show was the second All-Star Jazz show to have been produced. The April 30 show was hosted by Garry Moore and featured Louis Armstrong and His All Stars, Jack Teagarden, Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra, The Dukes of Dixieland, Gerry Mulligan, Erroll Garner and Jaye P. Morgan. The telecast was broadcast live, from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m, Eastern Standard Time. Songs that were performed included “The Lady is a Tramp,” “St. Louis Blues,” “My Baby Just Cares For Me,” “Basin Street Blues” and “Jeepers Creepers,” to name a few.

“Dantzic’s classic photographs capture the exhilaration of the music and the sheer delight of these musicians to be in one another’s company,” says Houston.

Jerry Dantzic was born in 1925 in Baltimore, Md., and moved to the Bronx with his family when he was six years old. He served in Europe during World War II, first as a combat infantryman the U.S. Army’s 30th Division of Ohio, then as a reporter for Stars and Stripes. He attended Kent State University on the G.I. Bill, graduating in 1949 with a bachelor of arts in journalism and English. Afterwards, Dantzic worked for the Daily Courier-Tribune as a writer and a reporter, then the Akron Beacon Journal.

He then moved back to New York City in the early 1950s to study photography and photojournalism at Columbia University, where he shared a darkroom with other aspiring photographers such as George Zimbel and Garry Winogrand. In 1952-53, Dantzic attended the workshop taught by Alexey Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research. Brodovitch, the Russian-born photographer and designer, was best known for his art direction of Harper’s Bazaar. Soon, Dantzic was working as a freelance photojournalist for publications such as Look, Saturday Evening Post, and the New York Times.

Based out in New York, Dantzic’s work included travel, sports, theater, still life, portraiture and record album covers. While still working as a photojournalist, in the late 1970s and 1980s he concentrated on panoramic color photography using the Cirkut camera. His pioneering color panoramic work won him two Guggenheim Fellowships and a solo exhibition in 1978 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, curated by John Szarkowski. He also taught for more than 25 years at Long Island University and Columbia University¹s Graduate School of Journalism.

Dantzic’s photographs are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, International Center of Photography, Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art.
Dantzic passed away in 2006.

His son, Grayson Dantzic, the archivist at Atlantic Records and of the Jerry Dantzic Archives, worked with Ogden Museum curator David Houston to organize this exhibition.