Joe Alper (b. 1925, d. 1968) was a self-taught free-lance photographer, whose photography included portraits and candid shots of people in a wide range of situations, as well as nature and architecture. The Joe Alper Photo Collection consists of about 80,000 black and white images taken in the decade between 1958 and 1968. His photos of folk, jazz, and blues musicians graced many album covers, magazines and books of the 1960’s, and demand for his pictures continues to the present. Musicians appreciated his ability to keep his 6'3" frame from blocking them or their audiences, and to either click in time to the music or refrain from shooting during quiet moments (the 35mm Minoltas that he loved and used were quite noisy then). The black and white images using only available light, the intimate shots born of Alper's reverence for the artists and their art and that captured musicians in intense moments of emotion and sweat, his darkroom technique and use of then unconventional photo sizes, all demonstrate Alper's artistry. If you own a folk, jazz or blues recording (or current re-released CD) from the 60s, you probably have a sample of his photography.
With his death at the age of 43, just after establishing the photography department at SUNY Albany, his career came to an end all too soon. However, in the 10 short years he managed to create an 80,000 image collection, almost 30,000 of these of folk and jazz musicians of the times, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, and Duke Ellington.
Another important focus of his work was the civil rights movement, which he participated in as well as documented. A number of those images appear in the book and film versions of Eyes on the Prize. He traveled and worked closely with the SNCC Freedom Singers.