Herman Leonard Biography

Herman Leonard's life has been shaped by two forces: his fascination with the camera and his love of jazz music. His family encouraged his early interest in photography, and after high school he enrolled at the only university to offer a fine arts degree in photography, Ohio University in Athens. In 1942 he was drafted. Ironically, he failed the army's test for a photography post - he didn't know the chemical formula for developer - and was assigned to a medical battalion. For over two years he trekked the Burma Road from Assam to Mandelay. Whenever possible he photographed his travels, developing the negatives on moonless nights with his helmet as a chemical bath.

After the war Leonard returned to school and earned his degree in 1947. His first professional break came when his idol, the famed portraitist Yousuf Karsh, offered him an apprenticeship. For a year Leonard traveled with Karsh and helped photograph such famous figures as Albert Einstein, President Harry S. Truman, and General Dwight Eisenhower. With Karsh he explored not only the mechanics of taking and printing pictures, but also the relationship between photographer and subject.

Leonard opened his first studio in Greenwich Village, where he began shooting portraits for stage and screen stars and commercial assignments for Life, Look, Esquire, Playboy, and Cosmopolitan. At night his passion for jazz would take him to the swinging nightclubs of 52nd Street, Broadway,and Harlem. Because his shoestring budget wouldn't cover entrance fees, he asked club owners to let him shoot during rehearsals and then gave them free prints to use for publicity. "Suddenly," Leonard says, "it all started happening."

With camera in hand he earned front-row seats to the finest musicians of the time: Ellington, Parker, Gillespie, Monk, Basie, Holiday, Armstrong, Vaughn, and countless others. His technique evolved through hours spent in low lighting as he learned to capture the smoky, three-in-the-morning atmosphere of the clubs. The photographs filled his personal diary of the music he loved and musicians he admired, some of whom were personal friends. As his work became known he began selling album cover and publicity photos, and soon his client list included most major recording labels.

In 1956 Leonard accepted an irresistible offer: to travel for three months as Marlon Brando's personal photographer while Brando researched Teahouse of the August Moon. After journeying through the Orient with the actor, Leonard was offered a job as chief photographer for the French music label Barclay Records. He left his New York studio to his assistant and moved to Paris. In the next few years he became the European photographer for Playboy, and then branched out into fashion and advertising photography. Over the next decades he shot photo essays and created images for Dior, Chanel, Yves St. Laurent, and other major clients. His photojournalism assignments took him to such exotic locales as Hong Kong, Bali, Singapore, Kuala-Lumpur, Bangkok, Agra, Bombay, Delhi, Katmandu, Kabul, Teheran, Istanbul, Nairobi, Uganda, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. He also continued taking jazz photographs whenever major artists appeared in Europe.

In 1980, after 25 years of successful commercial photography, Leonard moved his wife and family to a primitive farmhouse on the island of Ibiza, Spain. For seven years they lived at this remote location, adding electricity and plumbing to the house, as their son and daughter grew up running free on the island. When his children were finally in need of advanced schooling, Leonard decided to move to England.

Rather than use his outdated portfolio, Leonard dug out the old jazz negatives from beneath his bed and set up his first exhibition, "Images of Jazz," at a small London gallery called The Special Photographers Company. More than 10,000 people saw his exhibition during its month-long run and Leonard sold over 250 prints. England was swept by Herman Leonard's candid images of legendary jazz figures; BBC-TV created a half-hour special on his work, and the London Times devoted eight full pages in its Sunday supplement to the exhibition. It was an unheard-of success for a living photographer.

After the London exhibits Leonard appeared on numerous talk shows in the United States, Europe and Japan. Since 1988, there have been over 45 exhibitions featuring the jazz collection, which expanded to over 250 photographs as Leonard unearthed more images.

L'oeil du Jazz, a collection of the jazz photographs, was published in Paris, followed by the English version, The Eye of Jazz, in 1989. The book is now in its sixth printing. Leonard's second book, Jazz Memories, will soon be released in English in the United States.

The importance of Leonard's jazz images transcends their visual appeal. They are documents of historic significance, cataloguing the development of one of the greatest art forms in American history. Leonard's work received its highest honor ever when the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. requested that the entire Images of Jazz series be made part of its permanent collection. Today these prints are a treasured part of the American Musical History Department, displayed alongside the manuscripts of Duke Ellington and the trumpet of Dizzy Gillespie.

Leonard returned to the United States in 1989 and currently lives in New Orleans, a city he feels has embraced him like he was born there. Fascinated by its people, cultures, architecture, and thriving music scene, Leonard is currently working on a book of photographs of New Orleans.