The photograph "Giants at Play", showing the legendary American jazz musicians, graced the cover of "LIFE" magazine.
The author of the photograph is the Albanian Gjon Mili , who a year later, in 1944, would direct the classic short film, "Jammin the Blues", nominated for an Oscar.
Mill is known in history as a genius photographer, but he was also in love with jazz music. In New York, he had his own photography studio, and he made it a tradition to gather the most famous musicians (Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Lester Young, Gene Krupa) to play or improvise their music.
These meetings have entered the American vocabulary as "Jam Session", a "session" where musicians and spectators "jammed" from 9 pm to 4 am to have fun.
Born in 1904 in Korça and raised in Romania from the age of 5, Gjon Mili emigrated to America to study electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In 1937, inspired by the invention of stroboscopic light, Gjon Mili began experimenting with this type of light to capture moving objects on celluloid, creating extraordinary photographic compositions.
Gjon Mili thought that time could stop and he showed this with the photographs he left behind. He died on February 14, 1984 in Stamford, Connecticut, USA. /LAPSI.al
