With more than 5,000 images on line and more in its archive, GalleryO comprises a comprehensive visual record of the changing landscape of jazz and creative improvised music in North America and Europe. Combined with the thousands of reviews and reports by Ken Waxman, JazzWord is a prime source of information on the genre.
With camera in hand, Susan O’Connor has been following the international jazz, free jazz and improvised-music scenes for decades. In the early 1980s, when she was often the only (and almost always the only female) photographer at gigs, she produced compelling black and white film images of jazz musicians in performance, inspired by the work of Americans Herman Leonard, William Claxton and Francis Davis, plus Toronto photographer Mark Miller. In the early 1990s, her journalist-husband Ken Waxman and friend David Groskind, a brilliant webmaster, launched JazzWord, with GalleryO becoming the exclusive online venue for O’Connor’s work. Her work has also been exhibited in several Toronto locations and published in numerous books, industry magazines, CDs and posters.
Early in the 2000s, O’Connor began experimenting with digital cameras and shooting exclusively in colour, a change it has taken some time to embrace. Some digipix are converted to black and white to offset the effects of too-vibrant stage lighting. Nevertheless, she continues listening and carefully watching performances to capture the feelings, spontaneity and passion she had been documenting and printing for years on film. Working together in lighting and space situations of endless variety and lighting quality, musicians have continued to express their appreciation of her unobtrusive and consistent documentation of their work.
Changing Venues, Changing Sounds
Internationally recognized as a chronicler of improvisation and free-jazz artists including Barry Guy, William Parker and Carlo Actis Dato, O’Connor’s archive also comprises images of jazz greats Art Blakey, Milt Jackson and Betty Carter, plus blues artists including Etta James and Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson, as well as Soul Brother #1, James Brown. A searchable alphabetical list of all the images on Jazzword can be accessed from any page in the Artist section.
O’Connor has made both documentary and interpretive photographs in venues ranging from the plush St. Lawrence Centre in Toronto and the National Theatre of Poland in Wroclaw to New Orleans’ rustic Preservation Hall; from 13th-century chapels to art galleries to open-air stages, and in homes and basement venues lit with incandescent and LED bulbs, and sometimes only candles. Her work has captured the attention of critics, musicians, collectors, and lovers of jazz and improvised music in Canada, Europe and the U.S. Her first international exhibition took place in Austria in 2020, and she has staged several shows in Toronto since 1990, with a major one held over at the Toronto Reference Library, and during the Guelph Jazz festival in 2001.
Publications
Susan O’Connor’s evocative images have been published worldwide, including in CODA, Music Works and the Globe and Mail (Canada); JazzHalo (Belgium); the Wire (U.K.) and in the U.S in ArtVoice, Signal to Noise, Woove, JAZZIZ and New York City Jazz Record and on numerous websites. Her in-performance photos have been used by musicians and producers for promotional purposes, and in discographies and books including New York is Now: The New Wave of Free Jazz, Francesco Martinelli’s discography of Mario Schiano’s works, and Steve Lacy: Conversations. Some of these images are displayed in GalleryO, while additional ones have been selected from her JazzWord Catalogue (link at the bottom button).
Copyright (c) Susan O’Connor
All images on this site are copyright (c) the photographer: Susan O’Connor www.Jazzword.com and may not be reprinted or used without her written permission and a published credit; fees negotiable. For enhanced copies or for downloading, reproduction and licensing inquiries, please e-mail the photographer at [email protected] or her international representative in California, Cynthia Sesso, at CTSIMAGES
