IN RECENT years Jamie Hodgson was best known as a society wedding photographer in Kensington and Chelsea, but his lifelong passion was creating dramatic, atmospheric portraits of jazz musicians, in a smoky nightclub ambience as far removed as possible from the morning suits and shimmering dresses of his usual subjects.
His pictures of such stars as Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, mainly taken in the 1950s and 1960s, were known to a select few in the jazz community, but a collection of them finally reached a wider audience in an exhibition, Unseen Portraits, Masters of Jazz, which opened at the National Theatre in mid-December last year, and which runs until January 28. By the time the exhibition opened, however, Hodgson was already gravely ill with cancer, and he did not live to see the full range of enthusiastic reviews and articles generated by this retrospective collection of his finest — and favourite — work.
He began his career as a photographer in 1950, immediately after his National Service. In addition to working for several established fashion studios, he started taking pictures of showbusiness celebrities, including members of the Crazy Gang, Harry Secombe and Frankie Howerd. By 1956 he had a sufficient reputation to open his own studios and he was based in Kinnerton Street, Knightsbridge, for the rest of his career. Many glamorous fashion models of the period made their way to Hodgson’ s studio, among them Jean Shrimpton, Tania Mallett and Sandra Paul (later to become well-known as the wife of the former Conservative leader Michael Howard).
Although Hodgson made his living from such fashion shots, or by producing lavish albums of wedding pictures, he was quietly amassing an archive of jazz portraits, taken as he indulged his hobby of hearing the great American musicians on their occasional visits to Britain.
From the mid-1930s, musicians from the United States were prevented from appearing in this country. Only by arranging reciprocal appearances for British players in the US could Americans work here, and until the Beatles created a ready market in America, such exchanges were few. Hodgson managed to attend most of those that did take place.
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The worried look on the face of his portrait of Ella Fitzgerald was captured the moment she was told she could not use her regular backing trio at the London Palladium, and would have to sing with a local band.
Elsewhere, Louis Armstrong’s All Stars exude larger-than-life bonhomie, Duke Ellington oozes suave elegance and Lionel Hampton projects his accustomed showmanship.
Dizzy Gillespie’s upswept trumpet lies glinting in its case, ready to be snatched up and played by the puffy-cheeked bandleader. Beautifully composed and artfully shot, these rank as some of the finest and most atmospheric of all jazz photographs. It is a matter of regret that Hodgson did not take more of such portraits and exhibit them earlier, but equally their appearance in public shortly before his death was a welcome acknowledgement of this very special aspect of his work.
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Jamie Hodgson, photographer, was born on February 24, 1930. He died on January 8, 2006, aged 75.