Dutch expat Alice Jagtman loves jazz, Shanghai and photography, so she brought them together in a photo book of the city's jazz scene. Jazz is black and white, classy, timeless, sexy, she says, but above all it's "the bittersweet essence of life." 

 

 

With the soft melodic voice of Ella Fitzgerald barely audible in the background, mirrors and black-and-white prints adorn the studio-like room.

 

 

This is the home of Alice Jagtman, one of Shanghai's best-known jazz photographers and the author and publisher of a book, A Photo Journey of the Contemporary Shanghai Jazz Scene.

 

While China and isn't known for its jazz, Shanghai does have a number of clubs, a few of them very good.

 

"I grew up with jazz and it is and will always be my one and only everlasting love affair," says the impassioned photographer.

 

"I put Fitzgerald on for my 'ayi,' it is soft music so it won't make her crazy like my favorite musician Miles Davis. That's the thing about jazz -- it can be sweet and tender or drive you insane, but above all, it always tells you something."

 

Jagtman offers a smoky, late-night atmosphere for her subjects: a lone saxophone player is silhouetted against a hectic background of wires and instruments.

 

A trumpet player throws his head back with his eyes closed: his moment of release with the music is captured forever through the click of her shutter.

 

Few people know more about Shanghai jazz or have worked harder to document it over a decade than the Netherlands expat.

 

Recording its progress, its highs, its lows, its melodies and its scats through her lens, Jagtman says: "I compiled so many images that I wondered what to do with them, so I thought, why not make a book?"

 

So in January, she put her own money where her passion was. "I took the pictures myself, wrote the text myself and published it myself, so it is really a one-woman show."

 

A Photo Journey of the Contemporary Shanghai Jazz Scene is a limited run of just 350 copies, selling well at 488 yuan (US$63) for the 152-page edition. She uses an analog Minolta 77.

 

The volume has been praised as a collectors' item by Dutch newspapers.

 

Now Jagtman is seeking a publisher for a second run "to take the pressure off me."

 

Neither a singer nor musician herself, Jagtman is all about the visual aspects of the music.

 

With her piercing blue eyes and auburn hair, it is not hard to believe that Jagtman started her career as a model back home in Amsterdam.

 

Through modeling, she met the famous Dutch photographer Sanne Sannes, and learned a lot from observing him at work. "Then I began to take my own street photographs," she says.

 

"Arty not commercial," is her style, Jagtman explains. "I like to take pictures that I think are beautiful or interesting, I don't want to be told what to take."

 

Having traveled throughout China, she says: "I fell in love with the country; China just took me, so I moved to Shanghai in 1992, yet I am still here 14 years later."

 

Fourteen years ago Shanghai was very different. "It was a very dark town, no highways, no high-rise. Pudong was still farmland. Then in 1994 the economic development started and it all changed."

 

Speaking of the rapid development, she says, "It was charming then but now it is better, people have the chance to develop their lives."

 

Jazz is a relatively recent phenomenon in the city. Imported from the US, it took root in 1994 and Jagtman has been watching it develop.

 

She spent night after night in jazz venues like JZ's and Cotton's. "It took a while for the musicians to see that I was taking real photographs and from there they started to buy my prints," she says.

 

All her images are in black and white. "For me jazz is black and white, it is classy, it is timeless. When I see a picture of jazz in color it looks wrong. Jazz is about life, love, anger and loneliness. It can be sexy or sensual but above all it is the bittersweet essence of life.

 

"Shanghai is like this style of music, so it is a wonderful place to capture its essence."

 

She notes that it is usually men who compose jazz. "I don't know why that is."

 

But whether male or female, above all, the piano- trumpet- bass- trombone- and drum-playing musicians and singers all seen in her pictures to be having the time of their lives.

 

(Shanghai Daily March 28, 2007)