Benjamin Cawthra

Cultural historian Benjamin Cawthra began exploring photography and jazz with a museum exhibition on Miles Davis. Entranced by the many remarkable photographs of Davis, Cawthra set about learning how the great jazz photographs came to be and what they meant in the time of their creation. The most comprehensive study of its subject, Blue Notes in Black and White: Photography and Jazz is the result. He also contributed an essay and interviews with Davis associates to Gerald Early's Miles Davis in American Culture and curated Herb Snitzer: Photographs from the Last Years of Metronome, for which he also wrote the catalog essay. Cawthra was born in Washington state and has a Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis. He is associate professor of history at California State University, Fullerton. He maintains a blog on images, music, history and more at http://bluenotesinblackandwhite.com.