Have you ever thought about how closely related the timelines of jazz and photography are? EJ’s picture editor Verity Roberts spends most of her time sifting through some of the world’s biggest and best photo archives to bring our stories to life with images.

So when our colleagues at the Getty Images Archive in London, asked if we’d like to collaborate on a story, we couldn’t get over to their East London storage facility fast enough.

Thanks to a guided tour from Managing Editor and fellow jazz enthusiast Julian Ridgway, our minds were blown by the seemingly endless collection of glass plates, contact sheets, negatives and prints. Lots of the Getty collection is available to browse online, but as we discovered, there are thousands of additional images, just waiting to be enjoyed.

From Cab Calloway’s photo call in 1934, to Billie Holiday’s London dates in the 1950s, to David Redfern’s colour shots of Miles Davis, we’ve made a documentary about just a few of the jazz stories contained in that unassuming warehouse in an industrial estate in London. Viewing these images in person was a real privilege, and a moving experience, huge thanks to Julian Ridgway, Danielle Tamura and Gill Jones from the Getty Images team for hosting us.

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_{Behind the scenes photographs.}

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Presented by Verity Roberts and Julian Ridgway
Directed by Freya Hellier
Director of Photography Joshua Thompson
Produced and Edited by Hector Barnicoat-Hood

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