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THE BiTS INTERVIEW: ENNIFER NOBLE
J

Author of 50 Women in the Blues,
Contributor to Women in the Blues

Exhibit, Director of Photography

for www.chicagobluesguide.com.

Chicago Blues Hall of Fame inductee

2014. Member of the UK Blues

Federation, Contributor to various

Blues Publications, Member of The

Blues Foundation Member of the

Windy City Blues Society,

Volunteer at the Eel Pie Museum

BiTS:
Let’s make a start. Can you tell me something
about yourself, first of all? I mean your
background and all the rest of it.
JN:
Well, I pretty much spent my whole life in blues.
The first person I saw perform the blues was
Muddy Waters and I was kind of star-struck by the sound and there was just Muddy
Waters with one amplifier performing at a local festival. He lived in my town of Westmont, Illinois,

so I got to see him often. Him and all the other greats of that day, the Chicago blues stars. I would
always try to seek out the blues as much as I could and I started in the mid-1970’s, but I never took a
photograph of Muddy Waters or any of those greats back then and so fast forward to the mid-nineties,
I decided that I was going to photograph every blues legend that lived in Chicago or came through
Chicago and that’s what I’ve been doing since then, so almost 25 years.
BiTS:
You are clearly a very accomplished photographer. That doesn’t happen just by chance. Did you learn
some stuff? Did you go to school for it, or what?
JN:
[Laughing] No, I’ve always been an artsy kind of person. It was just a matter of finding what form of
art. I did take some graphic courses in the late nineties. I got a graphic arts degree and I took some

photography courses, just a couple, but I basically just learned by getting out there and just doing it.
Sometimes you get tips from being around other photographers in the photo pit around the world. I’m
always learning. I’m not a tech person. I just go out there and I shoot, and I just hope for the best. I
don’t do like an in-depth study about the technical aspect. I’m sure there’s so much about my camera
I don’t even know. What I do know is how to frame a photo, what to look for and the thing is that I’ve
been doing this blues and soul photography for almost 25 years now and I haven’t done a lot of other
kinds of photography. It’s always been focused on music photography, so I think you just learn by

doing it for so many years.