Frame After Frame: The Images of Herman Leonard; Part 1

In the 1940s and 50s, America was in love with jazz. The lights of New York City attracted young talented musicians by the hundreds. This is where I always wanted to be all my life. When I got there, Herman was already there. Herman Leonard was not a musician. His instrument was a camera. His photographs of jazz players were not made for money, but for his love of the music. This is a story of how one man's hobby became a national treasure. Herman Leonard was born in 1923 in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

He was raised in a home filled with the sounds of classical music, but young Herman wasn't interested in the samba works of dead composers. He craved the energy and the excitement of tunes like flat-foot-floodsie by slim-galoured and slammed steward. As a boy, he had no inkling that is world, and the music that he loved so much would one day converge. Family trips across the United States and overseas expanded Herman's horizons. A vacation in England turned into an extended stay in the British protectorate of Palestine. Platform suddenly become an adventure. And the contrast between that kind of a life and the life that my childhood friend in Allentown led was so different. But each time I'd come back, they'd all come over and tell them what happened because they'd never been out there. Herman's travels and exposure to different cultures gave him a taste for new experiences.

His older brother, an amateur photographer, provided him with the tools and the inspiration to record the exciting new world he was discovering. He gave me a little folding Kodak camera, the old-fashioned type. And I went out and photographed my friends as we played baseball in the lot next door, and developed the film under red lights because in the old days they had orthochromatic films, so you could have a red light on. And when I saw that image come up, I had a big thrill. It was a feeling that would never leave him. After graduating from high school in 1940, Herman enrolled in the photography program at Ohio University. His studies were cut short, however, by the Second World War. In 1942, after two years of college, the sophomore photography major became a 19-year-old army private. I wanted to be a photographer. That was my dream.

I used to go up in an airplane and photograph the ground, and they gave me a test, and I failed it. Because they asked the chemical ingredients of the developer, and I never knew what they were in there. All I did was buy the box of powder and mix it according to the instructions. Herman spent the war as an army medic. He cared for the wounded Allied troops fighting the Japanese in the hostile mountain. As jungles of Burma captivated by the beauty of the Burmese culture and countryside, he continued making pictures despite the adverse conditions. Having no dark room, I'd have to wait for a moonless night, and then under the tent, having no equipment, I would mix the developer and pour it into my helmet, and then I would see saw by hand the film into that, and then into another helmet over here where the fixer was, and I'd have my negatives. I couldn't print them there, but I would send the negatives back to the states, and then they would be printed in the states, and my father sent them back to me.

Two and a half years after entering northern Burma, Herman's medical team walked into the ancient city of Mandalay. The war had ended, and Herman's life as a college student was about to begin again. Back at Ohio University, he continued his studies and worked on the school yearbook. He also discovered a new use for his photographic skills. I was always somewhat embarrassed about approaching a girl for anything. I didn't feel that I was natural enough, but the camera gave me the entree. And I would get the girls to come in, and I was enamored by the photography of George Horrell of Hollywood. I did all the movie stars, and I would copy exactly the lighting that he had, the spotlight from the side, very glamorous, and the girls would be thrilled by this. Immediately after graduating from the university in 1947, Herman headed north on a journey that would change his life. I was always very intrigued by the photography of use of carsh of Canada, the great portrait photographer.

So I just took a chance and drove up there, and knocked on his door in Ottawa, and said, I'd like to say hello, much I admired your work, and would be a possibility of working for you. And he said, well, I don't need anybody, but as long as you drove this far, come out to lunch and meet my wife. It was a good lunch. Herman was given the nickname Leonardo, and the chance of a lifetime, and offered to work with the master photographer as an unpaid apprentice. There are turning points in people's lives. Events that take place that put you in a whole different direction, and that certainly did it for me. For the next year Herman studied his famous mentor shooting style, lighting and darkroom technique. He also observed how carsh handled his subjects, which included the most famous celebrities of the time. The most memorable was when we photographed Albert Einstein at Princeton University.

This is in 1948. And I remember when he announced that we were going to do this, that my mother had always told me that Albert Einstein was the smartest man in the world. And here, I was going to actually meet the smartest man in the world. We photographed Martha Graham, the modern dancer. She was extraordinary. Oh, a whole bunch of wonderful personalities. After a year of incredible insights and invaluable experiences, it was time for Herman to move on. Before leaving his mentor gave him a simple handwritten note to Leonardo, I know you have it in you to be a great photographer, go ahead and conquer. Herman headed for New York City and set up a small studio in Greenwich Village. I met a number of people in show business in the theater, and they needed publicity photos. So this is what I started with was portraiture, mostly for show business people.

Herman began establishing his reputation as a portrait photographer, and the tradition of cars. His subjects included well-known writers, sports figures, and the stars of stage and screen. He also began getting assignments from the major national magazines, such as Look, Life, Ebony and Playboy. While Herman's days were spent earning a livelihood, his other passion in life called to him. The enticing sounds of jazz poured out into the streets from the clubs and night spots of New York. I went to one of the nightclubs at that time called the Royal Roost on Broadway and 51st Street, roughly. I made a acquaintance with the owner of the club and asked permission to come in and shoot. And I went in the afternoon, and I shot some pictures, and I came back that night with the prints. And I gave them to the club owner for him to put outside.

And I gave other prints to the musicians, and that kind of opened it all up. And after that, one thing led to another, and I began to collect these photos only for myself. These were not commission pictures. I wanted to make the pictures for my own personal diary of these musicians who had my own so much. The subject matter I was doing was generally a nightclub work, where the lighting was relatively low. The film at that point was not super speed. So you had to do resort to a lot of improvisation. When forced to shoot under available light, Herman used a chick he had come across in an old photography book. By placing his unexposed film in tanks filled with toxic mercury vapors, he was able to double or triple his film's sensitivity to light. In the clubs where I was permitted, I would install my own strobe light. I had these little basic portable strobes, two of them.

I always used two lights. And I tried to position them in the same spot, the spotlight was. I tried to get the same effect on the musicians. Well, everybody smoked in those days, and the clubs were smoky. And when the spotlight was on the lead saxophonist, you'd see that beam of light on that effect. So my whole technical approach was to duplicate the atmosphere that existed at the time by putting my own lights up. And of course the listen to the music. I tried to reduce the photographic approach to the simplest approach in terms of lighting. Like in some cases, I remember being influenced by some of Picasso's drawings. There were just a few lines, but you could tell the whole character.

And this is what I tried to do in the photograph, not to overcomplicate the image with a lot of flat lighting. I wanted just to get the structure, the delineation of how they were built. And by using just one light and keeping the rest in shadow, leaving it to your imagination. The most memorable is Miles Davis. Structurally, visually, it was probably the best photographic subject that I've ever had in any category. The elegant Ellington was an outstanding individual. Sarah Vaughan had the most incredible vocal instrument anybody ever possessed. And Billie Holiday was completely different.

The soul that came through in her singing reflected her lifestyle, which was pretty rough. So I have some pictures of her that are pretty sad. They show the suffering and the pain that she went through. So I made a selection of those that don't reflect that so much. Because Carr told me, when I left him, he says, always tell the truth Herman, but in terms of beauty. And Ella Fitzgerald was gay and happy and swinging and melodic and gorgeous. Quincy is perhaps, in my estimation, one of the most talented in the broad sense, musicians ever. Everybody likes Quincy Jones. There's a wonderful graph. He took me in 1955.

I've had several different girlfriends say. I mean, that's the fact that favorite picture, you know. I guess there was a kind of fieldlessness and still idealism and everything else. He saw it before I saw it. We were just going to be trying to make a living and doing sessions with everybody. And Roy Eldridge and Sonny Stett and basically everything. It was incredible. There was no money in it. I did get a call occasionally from Downbeat or metronome magazine, but they would pay $10. You couldn't make a living at that. I had to do other kinds of photography to support myself. In 1956, a woman, Herman had photographed, introduced him to her boyfriend, a jazz buff named Marlon Brando. He invited Herman to be his photographer on a research trip to Asia. For several months, they toured the big cities and backwater villages of the Orient. On his way back to the United States, Herman stopped off in Paris.

And there he met with Nicole Barkley, a publisher of jazz magazine and co-owner with her husband Eddie, of the well-known Barkley record company. His Eddie and Nicole had started a revolution of the styles of record companies in Paris because very conservative companies like Ducati Thompson and some of these companies filled so very stayed and the guys still wore a bowl of hats and so forth. And they had all, all, all aristocratic attitudes and calls which had nothing to do with the record builders. Nicole Barkley, who earlier had purchased some of Herman's photographs, turned to him for a new work, a distinctive hip style so he knew he could deliver. Herman's long stint as an ex-patriot was about to begin. I came in with American approach and the art director liked it. So I began to do a lot of fashion and a lot of commercial photography.

Once in Paris Herman's client list grew rapidly. His assignments included high profile advertising and editorial features. Herman's magazine work eventually caught the eye of a wealthy German publisher and landed him the dream assignment of a lifetime. In which the client says to you, go anywhere you want, shoot anything you want, spend as much money as you want, just come back with pictures. No, I don't know anybody who gets those kind of assignments, but this guy was crazy. With an unbelievable cut blanche in his pocket and future wife Elizabeth, as his assistant, Herman set off on yet another exploration of the exotic cultures and locations that had always fascinated him. For now at least life continued to be a wonderful adventure. We went to Bali, back to Bali, after I'd been there with Brando. We went up to Nepal to Kathmandu. We went to Kashmir, lived on a houseboat, made out of Cedarwood.

We went through India to some extraordinary places. And then I came back to Munich with the pictures and did a show for him. He said, Bravo, where do you want to go next? For a year the trips continued to far-flung destinations. They yielded images of startling beauty deep insight, and as always with Herman's work, pure honesty. His work as a photojournalist allowed Herman to explore the many facets of the human condition. One of his most compelling subjects was the extraordinary Dr. Piera. She dedicated her life to the healthcare of prostitutes in Bangkok. Dr. Piera's home was also an orphanage for nearly 60 abandoned children. And they were all over the trees and in the garden and playing. And we're sitting on the porch one day having tea. In the afternoon, when a Chinese woman comes up to her crying, very pregnant, please deliver my baby.

The woman who already had five daughters said her husband had told her not to come home unless she had a boy. She begged the doctor to take the child if it turned out to be a girl. She had a girl. The mother was asleep and I said to the doctor, well, you've got another one on your hands now. And she says, come with me. They drove to the city hospital where Dr. Piera selected an unwanted male child born that day. They placed him in a small wooden cat carrying box equipped with a hot water bottle returned to her home and laid the infant next to his still sleeping mother and newfound twin sister. And that one motion gave this little boy a whole new life, brought that Chinese family back together again because the father came later and was overjoyed to have a son. And I mean, it was such a simple, beautiful human solution to this problem. And she would do these things all the time.

In Paris, Herman's business thrived throughout the 1970s, but the commercial accounts were providing less and less personal satisfaction. Suddenly in 1980, Herman turned his back on the high-powered $1,000 a day world of advertising photography. He packed up his family and retreated to a radically different life on the remote island of Ibiza or the coast of Spain. It was a bit hard at the beginning when we moved from Paris to Ibiza because it was such a different life, completely different from living in this big studio with, you know, models and cars and all of that to moving to this complete, literally almost desert island. I remember the beach right next to our house. You know, it always go down there barefoot. No electricity, no gas, no telephone, no running water. And we lived primitively. I put in electrical, I put in lights with solar panels on the roof. I installed the water system to do all of that for eight years.

Herman had dropped out of mainstream society. He, his wife Elizabeth and their two children, Shanna and David, lived off savings and money from the rental of his studio space in Paris. It's very free. I realized not how free it was. But things changed over time. The children needed access to more advanced schooling. His financial resources dwindled and Herman's marriage began to disintegrate. Suddenly it was the family broke up and we were all scattered around. And it was tough sort of facing reality. The money that I had saved was gone and I was flat broke. And I couldn't knock on an art director's door with an old portfolio. So I dug out the jazz negatives. And I went to the two best galleries in London and they turned me down saying there's no interest. Somehow the adventure of life had been replaced by financial crisis, personal turmoil and professional rejection.

At 64, the once prosperous photographer was unemployed and without prospects. All that changed when a gallery called the Special Photographers Company agreed to exhibit his jazz photos. We had an opening there that may have been the best opening any photographer had having been an unknown entity. We had over 10,000 people come through that gallery in a month. We sold 250 prints, which is enormous. Suddenly Herman was hot. His images had struck a deep cord with the public. His newfound fame began landing him gigs with high profile performers seeking the Leonard look. When Herman showed his photos in Washington DC, they attracted the usual large crowds and one very special visitor. I said to him in a gallery opening in Washington of his photographs, he said, you know, your work belongs in the Smithsonian.

He seemed surprised that I would say that and very, very modest. I could not believe it because this had been my dream to have them there. And now they have about 60 prints in their permanent collection. They're very unique because they document a time, a place, a music, a group of extraordinarily talented individuals in the photographic medium, which is something that's irreducible to any other medium. You can't get in print, in type, in sound, or in touch. What a photograph can give you. Like a song captures the moment in time that is popular and successful and exposed. It owns that time. Nothing can take that away from it. And it's the same with the photographs that Herman has done. As a curator, it's fascinating to me, and even inspiring to stay in on the museum floor

and watch how people will come by and be absolutely drawn in to his images. People were drawn to see Herman's work in Tokyo, Paris, Milan, New York, more cities than he can remember. But the best show I ever had was right here in New Orleans. Because I discovered New Orleans, because of that show I'd never been here before. When I first saw Herman's pictures, I felt that it was a type of portraiture that revealed to me a nightlife and things about music and things about these individual musicians that I really hadn't seen in similar attempts at trying to do music portraiture. Once I got to know Herman and he was background a little bit, it was clear to me that his technical finesse in these situations really put his photography at a level, both as an image maker and as a printmaker. What Herman does in the dark, Herman's is totally extraordinary.

Oh, I love printing. I think that's almost as creative a part if not more so than the actual shooting, because if you want to manipulate your print, because it gives you such a measure of control and experimentation. When Herman arrived in New Orleans for the opening of his show at A Gallery for Fine Photography, he discovered a city that suited his European tastes and style. Because of that, I moved to New Orleans, because I love the people and I found a warmth here and an ease of life that I've been looking for for a long, long time. And then you meet somebody like Wint Marcellus, who is the big upcoming if he's already arrived, genius of the trumpet of these days. I went to his house,

he came an hour late for the session to apologize profusely. I said, alright already, you know, I understand. His mother said, sit down and have some gumbo. And I said, ah, this is paradise. I want to do a book about what it is about New Orleans that appeals to me. So I want to do the architecture, I want to do the food, I want to do the people, I want to do the street musicians. Oh, the street musicians are great here. There's a whole group, and I've become acquainted with a number of them. I want to see my body. And of course, the music scene, which is extraordinary here. And the history of this place is fascinating compared to the history of other towns in America. So I've got like, I don't know how long it's going to take me to compile all the material, it doesn't matter.

But every day I think of what's happening today that I could record. The best is yet to come and me won't get me by. You think you've seen a son, but you ain't seen a child. He's got this passion for photography. And he's turned it into such a high art. And now of course, it's very well accepted. And he goes right to the top of the list. I mean, no one photographs better than Herman landed. Thank you.

The most memorable is Miles Davis. Structurally, visually, it was probably the best photographic subject that I've ever had in any category. The elegant Ellington was an outstanding individual. Sarah Vaughan had the most incredible vocal instrument anybody ever possessed.

Hi, I'm Quincy Jones and don't forget to check out Frame After Frame. Thank you. This is the story of the famed jazz photographer Herman Leonard. The most memorable is Miles Davis.

The elegant Ellington was an outstanding individual. Thank you. Thank you.