Louis Armstrong

by Photographer Robert Cameron

Framed Print 17" x 15"

Robert Cameron is best known as the photographer and publisher of the "Above" series of books. He produced over three million coffee table books containing aerial views of San Francisco, New York, Paris, London, Yosemite, Hawaii, Las Vegas and many other cities.

He was a good personal friend of Louis Armstrong's and when they bumped into one another in St. Louis in 1941, the great jazzman invited Bob to a concert he was giving that very evening. Bob was told to bring along his camera. Incidentally, he called Bob the Cameraman instead of Cameron.

The orchestra was told that Bob would be allowed to walk among the musicians and photograph while they played. Bob used a 4" x 5" Crown Graphic camera fitted with a slow burning flash bulb to capture the images in the dark venue. He only made eight exposures and captured a musical historic moment in time.

This photograph is one of Louis Armstrong improvising on stage. When Bob gave the jazz icon an 8"x10" photograph made from this negative, Mr. Armstrong said, "This is the best picture ever taken of me actually playing. All them other ones are of me holding the trumpet up to my lips."

This photograph was printed onto a fiber based silver gelatin emulsion. The silver image is produced from a chemical process reducing a silver image from silver halides. This process produces an image that is the most archival of all known print processes. The best estimate of a correctly made silver gelatin print is said to last 4,000 years.

Value: $500