Bob Barry’s subjects are focused on playing jazz, and that’s how he photographed them

Los Angeles photographer Bob Barry apparently leads a very interesting life.

Most recently, Barry (whose real last name is Horowitz) has brought us “The Brotherhood: Performance Portraits,” a series of photos of jazz greats up now at Flazh!Alley Studio in San Pedro—and we’ll get to that in a minute. But did you—did you know . . . “He’s been doing . . . ,” and gallery owner Joe Flazh pauses, his hands making the “I am dealing cards” gesture.

He’s been dealing cards?

“Yes,” says Flazh, “he’s a dealer at one of the local casinos.” How raffish of him.

Imagine losing a few extra bucks to the very man responsible for bringing us last year’s Flazh!Alley show of 15 long-missing Diane Arbus color transparencies, which the landmark photographer shot for a Zeiss camera advertisement back in 1969.

Yes, that Bob Barry, who befriended Arbus, served as her model in those frames, and then preserved her transparencies for 40 years. Now, finally, we catch him behind the camera at Flazh!Alley for this series of commanding black-and-white portraits which imbues the jazz world with all the gravitas it should ever need.

Depending on your perspective, jazz is either taken too seriously or not seriously enough, so after viewing this, you’ll either want to go out and find every Charlie Parker (or Duke Ellington or maybe Artie Shaw) reissue you can lay your hands on—or crank up the Zeppelin and let color back into your life. There’s not a pixel of color anywhere in this exhibit.

“He only uses ambient light, available light for everything,” Flazh says of Barry. “And he likes to get them while they’re performing, ’cause they’re less posed then.”

The they are folks like guitarist Phil Upchurch, who’s performed with the likes of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and the late Bo Diddley; guitarist Dave Koonse and bassist Putter Smith, captured performing together; Grammy-nominated guitarist Anthony Wilson; and the late George Van Eps, whose career dates back to 1934 and the Benny Goodman band.

The lone woman in their midst is acclaimed jazz guitarist Mimi Fox—who, her bio tells us, started out on drums at age nine, switched to guitar at age 10, and now chairs the Guitar Department at the Innovative Jazz School in Berkeley. Seen in glorious black-and-white, Fox—who wears her hair short—blends in uncannily with her male contemporaries.

The frames in this show were all shot live at seminal jazz guitarist John Pisano’s weekly Guitar Night gatherings in the San Fernando Valley—with one possible exception, a staged group shot that includes jazz fan Andy Summers of the Police. (Pisano, who appears as a subject in “Brotherhood,” invited Barry to the first gathering at Papashon’s in Sherman Oaks, and then Barry kept returning, more than 500 times to date.)

But somehow—and this isn’t necessarily a criticism—“Brotherhood” doesn’t feel intrinsically live, or even alive at times. Frozen by a quick camera shutter and framed in high-contract black-and-white, his subjects often don’t seem to be playing at first glance. They look posed, which is the opposite of what Barry intended—but really, he’s putting the effort on the viewer.

You have to study these photos carefully to see the big-mouth bass on the edge of the frame in Van Eps’s photo and to see that Van Eps’s acoustic-electric guitar is in fact plugged in; to see the passion written on Fox’s otherwise carefully composed face—and to realize why Koonse and Smith don’t look alive.

Turns out, they’re just not into you. They’re into playing jazz, and when this picture was taken, they were playing it. Now, you understand.

THE BROTHERHOOD: PERFORMANCE PORTRAITS FLAZH!ALLEY STUDIO | 1113 S PACIFIC AVE | SAN PEDRO 90731 | 310.833.3633 | FLAZHALLEYSTUDIO.COM | OPEN BY APPOINTMENT | THROUGH JULY 5 | PUBLIC CLOSING RECEPTION JULY 3, 7-11PM | FREE | 18+

Tags: art, bob barry, flazh!alley, jazz, photographs, San Pedro