World Of Wonders:

"Large-format camera in tow, the Katzes spent three seasons following the sword swallowers, snake handlers, illusionists and other performers of aberrational entertainment who make up the World of Wonders, capturing the glitter and kitsch, the liberty and hardship of the open road. The results are startling: dazzling portraits in lurid color, with an unflinching, high-definition intimacy." New York Times, Jennifer Balderama

Read full review: http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/shooting-the-freaks/?scp=1&sq=shooting%20freaks%20katz&st=cse

Salt Dreams:

"The salt flats of northern Utah, a vast expanse of mineral detritus planed to level smoothness by wind and water, are a perfect surface for testing homemade rockets, race cars, motorcycles and weirder things. This show includes spectacular shots of such activities by Jimmy and Dena Katz, two photographers who have spent a couple of years exploring the terrain with their cameras. So bright is the light, so boundless is the space, so gorgeous are the distant mountains that the place looks like eternity itself, but with a litter problem. The Katzes' searching lenses have also found pink plastic flamingos stuck upright in the Great Salt Lake, a pair of couches huddled under an overgrowth of scrub, a larger-than-life plaster cow pierced by spikes and lying on its side, orange traffic cones near a hand- lettered sign reading "Wait Here," and, by way of pathos, a limp brown hound glumly looking for shade. Clever photographers if not reformers, the Katzes see the flats as a limitless American playroom, a place where we don't have to pick up our toys since the party is never over." -Grace Glueck, New York Times

Humor, With a Serious Edge After All

"This is art governed by a spirit of whimsy, and it is quite refreshing. ...everyone can probably appreciate the bittersweet humor of Jimmy and Dena Katz’s colorful photographs of northern Utah’s Salt Flats, a once-pristine desert landscape that is now strewn with debris that people have left behind.

It can be funny to see couches wedged into a sand hill beneath desert shrubbery, or a gaggle of plastic penguins waddling on a salt lake. At the same time there is also something disturbing about the way people ruthlessly abandon objects in nature, and the volume and diversity of junk that has accrued out there.

Our smiles and laughter have a nervous edge, for deep down we know that what we are looking at is irresponsible and sad. Humor can be serious after all." -Benjamin Genocchio,New York Times

"State of the Art...Assembled in a brilliant new book, Salt Dreams are etched by a hard sun and almost hallucinatory in their color." -Russel Hart, American Photo

"The work of the Katzes reminds us of what makes landscape photography so exciting and so essential." -Holly Hughes, Photo District News

Jazz:

"At mid-century, Bill Gottlieb, William Claxton, and I documented Jazz, America's only original art form, in an artistic and dynamic way, virtually inventing jazz photography. It gives me great joy to know that our legacy is being carried on magnificently with Jimmy Katz, the best working jazz photographer on earth.” Herman Leonard

"How you know you've made it in jazz: you get your photo taken by Jimmy Katz". NPR

Additional New York Times interview: http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/showcase-34/

Addional NPR interview: http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2009/09/bluenote.html

"Katz has risen to be the most important photographer working in jazz today." Das Spiegel

"Over the past two decades, Jimmy Katz has established himself as the preeminent jazz photographer of his generation...

Along with dozens of riveting live performance shots, what's especially moving here are the pictures that reveal intimate moments offstage, in the recording studio and especially at the artists' homes..." -Joel Roberts

"He can be considered one of the most well known and luckiest photographers in the world and he has immortalized some of the music greats for all time." La Repubblica, Italy

"This could be the start of something big...Katz's work has dominated the last two decades of jazz in New York and there are so many portraits that just blow you away. Jazz Katz is the hammer of coffee table books." -Axel Stinshoff, Jazzthing, Germany

"Jazz Katz is a wonderful book... by sensitizing the eye for the physical expressions of jazz musicians, Jimmy Katz's photographs approach the true nature of jazz. His photographs tell small stories, frozen in a single picture just like a memory." -Harald Justin, Jazzthetik, Germany