NAME: Tato Riquelme
BIRTH PLACE: Argentina
BIOGRAPHY
ABOUT MY JAZZ IMAGE
Growing up in Argentina, the images that perfectly represented the US to me was an ice cold martini, the blues and jazz. I envision everyone in pork-pie hats or satin dresses sipping from tall martinis. That, to me, was exclusively and elegantly America.
When I came to New York 19 years ago and began going to jazz shows, I realized that although the music itself had changed dramatically over fifty years, there were still sentient moments when a musician glances out at the audience after a heart-wrenching solo or he tenderly pulls his bass close to him like a child. Moments like those that Roy DeCarava captured with a piercing immediacy, stealing a glimpse of John Coltrane boyishly burying his head in the enormous shoulder of Ben Webster. I waited anxiously through each show for those moments when the thrill of the music transported the musicians and their glory could be read on their faces or in the way they touched their instruments. I began photographing these moments when the musicians slipped out of time and into that resplendent realm that runs eternal through jazz. I became intrigued whit the perilous craft of capturing that moment so that, later, when someone sees the photograph without the music they have a thick description of all that was contained in that sublime second. I learned to photograph them at those moments when they slipped into delight without disrupting their euphoria. I learned to wait, compose the frame, inhale deeply and shoot.
