Julee and Mark with Jean Ritchie and George Pickow at Traditional Song Week '08
George Pickow, a photographer best known for the thousands of album covers in which he captured the titans of folk, jazz and pop music—including Theodore Bikel, Louis Armstrong and Lena Horne—in their midcentury prime, died on Dec. 10 in Roslyn, N.Y. He was 88 and lived in Port Washington, on Long Island.
The cause was respiratory failure, his son Jon said. Mr. Pickow also had a home in Viper, Ky., the birthplace of his wife, the folk singer Jean Ritchie.
Working quietly behind the scenes, Mr. Pickow (pronounced PEEK-oh) documented the bubbling cultural ferment of New York City, and in particular Greenwich Village, where he and Ms. Ritchie lived after their marriage in 1950.
For Elektra Records and other labels, he photographed folk singers like Josh White, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins and, of course, Ms. Ritchie, as well as jazz and pop artists like Little Richard, Dizzy Gillespie, Tony Bennett, Nina Simone and Louis Jordan.
Mr. Pickow, who was originally trained as a painter, also shot many distinguished visual artists, among them Thomas Hart Benton, Reginald Marsh, Chaim Gross and Edward Hopper, images that have since been exhibited around the country.
Some of his most striking photographs, in stark black and white, depict an array of artisans and ordinary people around the world plying their trades: women weaving and churning butter, men binding books and making harps and pipe organs and even waxwork heads.
Mr. Pickow, who helped his wife collect traditional songs from singers in Appalachia and Britain, contributed photographs to many of her books, among them “The Swapping Song Book" (Oxford University, 1952), a volume of songs from the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky.
Also an independent filmmaker, he was a cinematographer on “Festival" (1967), a documentary film about the Newport Folk Festival, directed by Murray Lerner.
Working quietly behind the scenes, Mr. Pickow (pronounced PEEK-oh) documented the bubbling cultural ferment of New York City, and in particular Greenwich Village, where he and Ms. Ritchie lived after their marriage in 1950.
For Elektra Records and other labels, he photographed folk singers like Josh White, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins and, of course, Ms. Ritchie, as well as jazz and pop artists like Little Richard, Dizzy Gillespie, Tony Bennett, Nina Simone and Louis Jordan.
Mr. Pickow, who was originally trained as a painter, also shot many distinguished visual artists, among them Thomas Hart Benton, Reginald Marsh, Chaim Gross and Edward Hopper, images that have since been exhibited around the country.
Some of his most striking photographs, in stark black and white, depict an array of artisans and ordinary people around the world plying their trades: women weaving and churning butter, men binding books and making harps and pipe organs and even waxwork heads.
Mr. Pickow, who helped his wife collect traditional songs from singers in Appalachia and Britain, contributed photographs to many of her books, among them “The Swapping Song Book" (Oxford University, 1952), a volume of songs from the Cumberland Mountains of Kentucky.
Also an independent filmmaker, he was a cinematographer on “Festival" (1967), a documentary film about the Newport Folk Festival, directed by Murray Lerner.
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