Lauren was born in Chicago in 1956 and raised on Chicago’s south side. She ended her formal training in the mid 70s and became an autodidact, beginning a body of work investigating creative improvised music and documenting its community of creators. She was inexorably drawn to their bold truth telling and creative liberation theology; a vow to transform a legacy of tyranny and injustice into freedom and exultation.
She began her tenure as executive director of the Jazz Institute of Chicago in 1996, photographing the story of the Jazz Institute and its service to Chicago’s jazz community over two decades. Deeply inspired by the experience of collective creativity, it grounded the collaborative work she performed over 22 years in organizing, curating, and presenting musicians performing in Chicago and internationally. She created places for community to gather, where congregants came together for spiritual union and reunion. She created innumerable opportunities for new work to be conceived and performed, and photographed it all, rendering moments of transformation into textures of color and spectrums of light. She stepped down from her role as executive director in 2019 to focus more deeply on her own artistic endeavors.
Her immersive exhibition Tangible Sound: A Visual Celebration of Creative Improvised Music (supported by a 3AP crowdsource funding campaign) was recieved enthusiastically by over 100 people who attended on May 9 and 10, 2024.
Her work is included in dozens of publications, including The Freedom Principle: Experiments in Art and Music 1965-Now, the catalog for an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art celebrating the 50th anniversary of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) that included ten of her photographs; and The City Was Yellow: Chicago Jazz and Improvised Music 1980 to 2010. Lauren has had multiple exhibitions in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. In 2015 a retrospective Lauren Deutsch: A Musical Metamorphosis: Photographs from 1979-2015, was mounted at the University of Chicago’s Reva and David Logan Center. In 2023 she received the Lifetime Achievement in Photography Award from the Jazz Journalist Association.
2018 Nicole Mitchell
© Lauren Deutsch
Featured Artworks
2022 William Parker
2022 William Parker
© Lauren Deutsch
2024 Tsukasa Taiko Drummers
Taiko drummers rise up into the air against a background of drummers bathed in pink
© Lauren Deutsch
Taiko drummers rise up into the air against a background of drummers bathed in pink
2022 Yoshinojo Fujima
2022 Yoshinojo Fujima
©Lauren Deutsch
2023 Roscoe Mitchell
2023 Roscoe Mitchell
©Lauren Deutsch
2022 Linda May Han Oh
2022 Linda May Han Oh
© Lauren Deutsch
2022 Sun Ra
2022 Sun Ra
© Lauren Deutsch
2020 Tomeka Reid
2020 Tomeka Reid
© Lauren Deutsch
2021 Max Roach
2021 Max Roach
© Lauren Deutsch
2022 Marlene Rosenberg
2022 Marlene Rosenberg
© Lauren Deutsch
2019 Edward Wilkerson
2019 Edward Wilkerson
© Lauren Deutsch
2020 Great Black Music Ensemble conducted by Wadada Leo Smith
2020 Great Black MUsic Ensemble conducted by Wadada Leo Smith
© Lauren Deutsch
Lauren Deutsch has crowd-funded a project with 3AP
-
- $10,755 raised of $6,000 goal
- 0 Days 0:00:00 LEFT
Imagine being able to walk inside the thunderous sound of a taiko drum or feel enveloped by the sinuous sounds of a saxophone or cello or bass. What if your body became part of a visual mapping of colors and …
Read more about Tangible Sound: Immersions