Francis Wolff was a commercial photographer in his native Berlin before he escaped on the last boat out of Nazi-controlled Germany bound for America in late 1939. Arriving in New York City, Wolff joined his childhood friend and fellow jazz enthusiast Alfred Lion who had just founded a small independent jazz label called Blue Note Records. Soon, Wolff was bringing his camera to recording sessions and jazz clubs where he’d capture intimate portraits of the musicians at work, and over the next three decades he steadily built one of the greatest collections of jazz photography of all-time.

Over his career Wolff photographed a true Who’s Who of Jazz history capturing iconic images of legends including Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Horace Silver, Art Blakey, Jimmy Smith, Dexter Gordon, Grant Green, Lou Donaldson, Donald Byrd, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, McCoy Tyner, Ornette Coleman, and many more. His remarkable photographs were featured in countless Blue Note album cover designs by the visionary graphic designer Reid Miles who used Wolff’s images to striking effect.

In recent decades, thanks to the tireless dedication of the collection’s longtime caretaker Michael Cuscuna of Mosaic Images, Wolff’s photographs have begun to be recognized as works of art themselves. With the collection now owned once again by Blue Note Records, we are working to preserve and reveal even more of this remarkable archive which includes more than 20,000 black & white and color images taken between 1940-1970.