Photographs

The Archive holds a large and important collection of photographs.  The preservation, cataloguing and digitisation of this growing body of work is ongoing.

You can explore here a sample of over 1000 photos of musicians performing in clubs, festivals and concerts, and offstage. The earliest are those taken by George Webb in the 1940s, and many feature American musicians visiting the UK from the 1950s onwards.

The photos are in two collections – collection name and colour theme (colour or iconic black and white). The first includes collections by several individual photographers, with over 700 taken by Denis Williams. Many hundreds of photos taken by Brian Foskett have been digitised and more will be uploaded during 2021.

The named collections also include those from 1960s British counter-culture leader John 'Hoppy' Hopkins. This brings together images of a number of British and visiting American jazz and blues artists, as well as capturing the spirit of Britain in the 1960s.

Information is also provided to show how some collection images can be bought through our partner Heritage Images.

As well as photos, the colour-themed images collection contains images from our digitised journals.

All reasonable efforts have been made to ensure that any intellectual property rights in the journals and images displayed have not been infringed. If you do not believe this to be the case then please contact us.

Due to copyright restrictions, some digitised items cannot be viewed over the internet: these are indicated by the National Jazz Archive logo. However, you can view them online by visiting the Archive. To arrange a visit call (from the UK) 0208 502 4701, email us directly using the address enquiries@nationaljazzarchive.org.uk, or use our easy-to-use contact enquiry form.