William Claxton

William Claxton (1927–2008) was the American photographer who gave West Coast jazz its look. Growing up in Pasadena, he turned a teenage love of jazz into a career, photographing musicians in clubs and recording studios around Los Angeles in the early 1950s and designing album covers for Pacific Jazz Records.

His portraits of the young Chet Baker made both men famous, and over five decades he photographed Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk and many others with the same relaxed intimacy. Beyond jazz, Claxton was a celebrated fashion and portrait photographer, known for his collaboration with his wife, the model Peggy Moffitt, and designer Rudi Gernreich, and for his candid pictures of Steve McQueen.

His books include Jazz Seen and Young Chet. All That Jazz, at House of Lucie Pont-Scorff, presents vintage prints from this extraordinary archive.