Jazz silhouettes to syncopate Balboa street fair
After publishing two books of photographs of Bay Area jazz and blues musicians, Jessica Levant got the impulse to elevate her documentary pictures into fine art.
Working with one of her standard color digital images of electric bassist Tom Lander, she replaced the musicians in the background with fake leaves. Then she changed it from color to black-and-white.
That image took honorable mention in an international art contest, so Levant began a series of jazz silhouettes that are making their framed debut in the gallery at Noise, a jazz-centric record store on Balboa Street in San Francisco.
The exhibit opens Saturday, Aug. 4, to coincide with Playland-on-Balboa, a first-ever street fair that will block off the Outer Richmond street, between 35th and 38th avenues. There will be bands on a stage playing live music outdoors, and the Balboa Theatre will screen several films, including a documentary about Playland-at-theBeach, the midcentury amusement park located at the western end of Balboa until 1972.
Levant plans to be at a table in front of Noise all afternoon to discuss both Playland and the evolving jazz scene, which she’s watched change firsthand as a bornand-bred San Franciscan.
The books and prints she will be selling represent the three nights a week she has spent in the bars and dive clubs where jazz manages to hang on in the Bay Area. She brings her small Sony RX100, good for shooting in dark places without a flash. When she sees something she likes she stands up and moves in close to the band — which is not an imposition because by now every front player in town knows her.
“I’m looking for expression, passion and posture,” she says. “I try not to get bass players looking bored.”
Only later, when she clicks through her night’s work, will she find maybe one out of 30 that would work as a silhouette. Then she will manipulate it with filters to reduce it to a noirish mood.
“I don’t do too much thinking,” she says. “It’s a gut reaction.”
One of the places Levant shoots is the Balboa Theater, which screens jazz classics. Before each show, a combo plays in the ornate lobby. An image Levant made of a man with a standup bass at the Balboa is in the show at Noise.
“These photographs capture the essence of both the musician and the music,” says Sara Johnson, who curates the gallery at Noise. “Looking at each of these silhouettes, you can hear the instrument that the musician is known for.”