Jay Maisel

Album cover of Kind of Blue.

Jay Maisel (born January 18, 1931, Brooklyn, New York) is an American color photographer. His awards include the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society of Media Photographers[1], and the Infinity Award of the International Center of Photography[2]. Maisel primarily shoots with a Nikon D3.

Maisel studied painting and graphic design at Manhattan's Cooper Union and at Yale University, and became a photographer in 1954.

Works by Jay Maisel are in the ASMP Collection at George Eastman House.

One of Maisel's most famous images is his photograph of Miles Davis that appeared on the cover of Davis's album Kind of Blue. In 2009, an image based on the original Kind of Blue album cover was created for the cover of a chiptune tribute album titled "Kind of Bloop". Attorneys representing Maisel demanded damages and that the resulting image be removed from the chiptune album, resulting in an out-of-court settlement of $32,500 from the album's producer.

Maisel lives with his family in the historic Germania Bank Building in lower Manhattan. Built in 1898, the 35,000-square-foot (3,300 m²) single-family mansion contains 72 rooms over six floors. Maisel purchased the building in 1966 for $102,000 when the neighborhood was in severe decline. The building's value estimated at $30 to $50 million in 2008. New York Magazine called it "the greatest real-estate coup of all time."

External links

• Art Directors Club
• Jay Maisel official site
• ASMP (American Society of Media Photographers)
• International Center of Photography