WORLD IN A SNAP | Interesting images from around the world
Jazz history: the photography of Herman Leonard
23
June
Photographer Herman Leonard, now 86, did not work exclusively in the music world, but he will likely be best remembered for his jazz images. In the last half of the 20th century he documented the most fertile period in jazz history. That body of work won him a $33,000 Grammy grant he's now using to archive and digitalize the photos. Leonard is the first photographer to be chosen for this grant, whose recipients are usually linked to the recording industry. He was honored recently in New York with a Lucie Award for achievement in portraiture. Past recipients include Annie Leibovitz, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Cornell Capa. Read a recent article by Associated Press writer Verena Dobnick about Herman Leonard.
1948: Tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon enveloped in his cigarette smoke at the Royal Roost in New York. The photographer, Herman Leonard, said that back in those days a photographer wouldn't be able to see the smoke in a dark room, because it was only illuminated for a fraction of a second by the flash, so taking a dramatic picture like this required skill and intelligent guess work. (AP Photo/Herman Leonard Photography, LLC., CTSIMAGES)
1958: Duke Ellington plays the piano at the Olympia Theater in Paris. Leonard recalls that when he poked his camera through the curtain backstage he was happily surprised to find Ellington "bathed in celestial light," and when he shot this picture, Ellington heard the click of the camera and gave Leonard a wink. (AP Photo/Herman Leonard Photography, LLC., CTSIMAGES)
1949: Billie Holiday cooks a steak for her dog Mister in her apartment in the Harlem neighborhood of New York. Leonard says she came to the door wearing a simple house dress and an apron and "First I thought, this is the maid." But it was Holiday, one of the greatest voices of modern time, whom Leonard would continue to photograph throughout her life. (AP Photo/Herman Leonard Photography, LLC., CTSIMAGES)
1949: Miles Davis at Birdland in New York. The photo was one of 8,000 prints that were destroyed in Leonard's New Orleans home when a levee just a few blocks from him home burst open in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. But 70,000 negatives were saved after being rushed into the vault of a nearby museum. He now lives in California. "Water seeped in and stopped around the center of the picture where the face was, and mold started to form. The result is beautiful," Leonard says, joking, "It's mother nature and Herman Leonard." (AP Photo/Herman Leonard Photography, LLC., CTSIMAGES)
1991: Miles Davis in Montreux, Switzerland where Davis would perform his last concert, six weeks before he died. The photographer Herman Leonard followed Davis over four decades, from his beginnings as a trumpeter in the late 1940's. "I could see in his face ... he knew he was dying," Leonard recalled of this photo. (AP Photo/Herman Leonard Photography, LLC., CTSIMAGES)
2004: Herman Leonard, now 86 years old, took this self-portrait in New Orleans. The photographer captured the odd, intimate moments in the lives of jazz greats, documenting the most fertile period in jazz history in the last half of the 20th century. His subjects range from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Miles Davis and Billie Holiday. (AP Photo/Herman Leonard Photography, LLC., CTSIMAGES)
