THREE’S NOT A CROWD IF ONE IS THE CAMERA

“When I’m out there, it’s just the three of us: the performer, myself and the camera,” Joe La Russo mused before his portraits of performing musicians on display this month at the William Grant Still Community Arts Center on West View Street off Adams Boulevard. For the performers, these photographs suggest, there is nothing but the music.

A grand piano stands in the center of the circular gallery, as it did when pianist Idrees Sadiq entertained opening-night viewers of “Feel the Music,” a selection of La Russo’s recent black-and-white work. Sadiq’s portrait is one of the few images here in which the subject is obviously aware of the camera. In virtually all the others, from James Brown sweating it out at the portable keyboard to Tina Turner glowing in the spotlight and Cab Calloway belting out a tune in a thicket of palm fronds at the Vine St. Bar & Grill, the artists are all deeply engrossed in their work.

And so is La Russo. Shooting on location in local jazz and blues clubs and theaters is a busman’s holiday for this Brooklyn-born commercial photographer who spends much of his time in the studio illustrating products, food, people and interiors for his clients. His personal work is the product of an entirely different attitude, more akin to the strategy of Henri Cartier-Bresson than four-color glossies. Like the influential French street photographer whose name has become synonymous with the notion of the “decisive moment,” La Russo stalks subjects such as Herbie Hancock, Nina Simone and Oscar Peterson in concert for the height of action or most telling gesture.

“When the artists are on stage, doing their thing with their energy and getting feedback from the audience, it’s just a magic moment,” La Russo said. “I wait for that moment and I freeze it. . . . I say it’s just the three of us, because I’m so tuned in to the artist that I’m oblivious to the audience and sometimes I’m oblivious to the music also. When the artist hits an emotional peak, that’s when I shoot.”

Wearing a dark shirt so as not to disturb the audience or performer, La Russo limits himself to the available light of the club or theater and shifts cautiously about the stage, “like a ninja--you move around and you’re not seen.” He often goes home with sore legs, “from crouching down and duck-walking just to stay low.”

His results convey the feeling of being very close to a performer stripped of a mask, a singer or instrumentalist emerging from darkness into the heat of music and spotlights. In gesture and effort, some might be dancers. One of La Russo’s particular favorites is that of Patti La Belle on stage at the Shrine, arms outstretched like a great zebra-striped bird about to land.

“Certain people I look at as classics, one of a kind, and when they’re gone they’re no more. I’m sorry I missed Count Basie. But I did get Cab Calloway only four weeks ago.”

La Russo pointed out an intense portrait of Al Green singing skyward. “He kept the whole audience waiting for an hour and a half, but he was very graphic, very animated. He was singing gospel tunes, so I thought that shot looked like he was looking up to whoever’s up there looking down.”

The immediacy of these images is emphasized by flush-mounting the photographs on boards that stand out slightly from the wall, rather than the traditional mat and glass framing. The installation design was the work of La Russo’s co-curator, professional partner and “best critic,” his wife Holly La Russo. The La Russos also work as a team on commercial projects, although Joe remains responsible for the final click of the shutter.

Ten years and dozens of concerts after beginning his “Feel the Music” series, the photographer shows no signs of slowing down. “When I started this series, I had it in mind to do a book called ‘All the Way Live,’ but when I got in the darkroom and started to print these pictures, I looked at them and said, ‘I can feel the music.’ Thus the new title, still in search of a publisher.”

La Russo hopes that his photographs will generate interest in seeing American jazz and blues artists in person and thus increase support for local clubs, “so our musicians don’t have to go to Europe to earn a living and we can have them right here in our own back yard.”

“And,” he adds with a smile, “I can be out there shooting.”