ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the frequency of, and the context in which, women are depicted photographically in three commonly used jazz history textbooks. Though photography, a visual medium, occupies a subordinate position in an otherwise aural world, it faithfully accompanies music through album covers, texts, documentaries, and advertising. Yet, jazz photography in educational texts remains uncritically examined for its role in constructing and socializing readers to the norms and values of jazz. Our chapter examines 402 photographs from three popular jazz history textbooks and the results reveal that only 15.4 percent of the photos in these texts feature women. Rarer still are the female non-pianist instrumentalists (.5%), compared to vocalists (8%) and pianists (4%). This review of photographs in authoritative educational texts reveals systemic marginalization of women in jazz education—a visual, yet silent, undercurrent that espouses canonical ideals despite any authorial intent to the contrary. We demonstrate that photography plays more than a passive role in the socialization of learners as it actively shapes what musicians, historians, audiences, and educators expect of authentic, textbook-sanctioned, jazz.
