The Sound I Saw.

Photographs and Text by Roy Decarava.

Phaidon, London, 2001. 208 pp., 196 tritone illustrations, 13¼x10½".

"Conceived, designed, written and made by hand as a prototype by master photographer Roy DeCarava in the early 1960s yet unpublished for nearly half a century, 'The Sound I Saw' has largely existed, until now, as a legend among the cognoscenti of the photography world. Presented as a stream of 196 soulful images interspersed with DeCarava's own evocative poetry, the book is, in its form and effect, the printed equivalent of jazz.
DeCarava has long been recognized as one of the great photographers of the 20th century, best known for his street photography and his soulful jazz images of the 50s and 60s. In the early 1960s he conceived, designed and hand bound a book mock-up which included his own poetry and close to 200 of his photographs of jazz musicians. The Sound I Saw was never published, and became a thing of legend among photographers, an unrealized work that embodied, on page and in image, the essence of jazz. Phaidon has raised the work from relative obscurity and has published the entire book as DeCarava originally intended it to be seen.

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