The Defining Women of Jazz
Highlights from the William P. Gottlieb Collection
Contents: About the Collection | Tech
About the Collection
The Defining Women of Jazz is a selection of portraits from the William P. Gottlieb collection at the Library of Congress, which captures Jazz culture in the United States in the 1930s and 1940s. The Defining Women of Jazz was curated with the intent of highlighting the influence Black, Latin, and immigrant women had on the Golden Age of Jazz. Some of the images are iconic, such as Billie Holiday performing at the Downbeat Club (Portrait of Billie Holiday, Downbeat, New York, N.Y., ca. Feb. 1947). Others, such as the photograph of musician Henry Wells with his band (Portrait of Henry Wells, New York, N.Y., ca. Nov. 1946), feature lesser known and completely unnamed women who contributed to the era. It is the hope that this collection guides viewers to take a second look at the women pictured. These women didn’t just play jazz. They defined it, with a legacy that still swings.
This collection was created for an Information Organization course through the University of Iowa.
Technical Credits - CollectionBuilder
This digital collection is built with CollectionBuilder, an open source framework for creating digital collection and exhibit websites that is developed by faculty librarians at the University of Idaho Library following the Lib-Static methodology.
Using the CollectionBuilder-CSV template and the static website generator Jekyll, this project creates an engaging interface to explore driven by metadata.
