Philippe Lévy-Stab : “Jazz, The Sound of New York”

For nearly forty years, Philippe Lévy-Stab has been exploring the soul of jazz through photography, capturing the artists who shaped this music and those who keep it alive today.

His timeless and evocative black-and-white work captures the intensity of the gaze, the tension in the hands, the pause between two notes, and the inner momentum that precedes improvisation. Each image is a fragment of jazz held in suspension, a silent vibration that invites us to hear the music through the gaze.

His portraits of artists such as Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Freddie Hubbard, Elvin Jones, Wynton Marsalis and so many others have helped to create a major visual record of jazz. Exhibited in prestigious institutions such as the Modern Art Gallery in Taiwan, the Musée de l’Élysée in Lausanne, the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Library of Congress in Washington, his works bear witness to an ongoing dialogue between image and music.

With “Jazz, The Sound of New York”, Philippe Lévy-Stab offers a sensory immersion in the musical world of New York, through the bridges, streets, clubs, faces and atmospheres that embody the city’s unique vibrancy.

The exhibition seeks to reveal not only the artists, but also the spirit of a place. A meeting of music and image, of rhythm and light, an invitation to listen to the photographs as if they were silent scores.