Frame After Frame: The Images of Herman Leonard; Part 2

In the 1940s and 50s, America was in love with jazz. Why, what do you want? The rights of New York City, attracting young, talented musicians by the hundreds. This is where I always wanted to be all my life, and when I got there, a permit 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 somber works of dead composers. He craved the energy and the excitement of tunes like flat foot fluigie by Slim Galing and Slam Stewart. As a boy, he had no inkling at his world and the music that he loved so much would one day converge. Family chips across the United States and overseas expanded Herman's horizons. A vacation in England turned into an extended stay in the British protected of Palestine. So I could suddenly become an adventure. And the contrast between that kind of a life

and the life that my childhood friends in Allentown led was so different that 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 in the old-fashioned time. And I went out and photographed my friends as we played baseball in the Latinx door and developed the film under red lights because in the old age they had orthochromatic film. They 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 dreams. You grew up in an airplane and photographed 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 was in there. Well, I did was buy the box of powder, 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, this 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 moolish 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 fixture was, and 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 really somewhat embarrassed about approaching the girl for anything, but 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, and I would, by the photography of George Morel, and Hollywood, and 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 carched 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, and how much I admire your work, and would it be a possibility of working for you? Then 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, an offer to work with a master photographer as an unpaid apprentice. There are turning points in people's lives. The 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 that carched handle the subjects, which included the most famous celebrities of the time. The most memorable was one main photograph 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. At least photograph Martin 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. It was poetry mostly for show business people. Herman began establishing his reputation as a portrait photographer in the tradition of cars. His subjects included well-known writers, sports figures, and the stars of stage and school. 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 person 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. He 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 back 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, I began to collect these photos. Only for myself, these were not commissioned 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 a resort to a lot of improvisation. When forced to soup and available light, Herman used it sick he had come across in an old photography book. By placing his unexposed film and tanks filled with toxic mercury vapors, who 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, but the spotlight was, so I get the same effect on the musician. 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 rest of 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 that 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 would build. And by using just one light and keeping the rest in shadow, leaving it to your imagination, the most memorable, modernist, structuring, visually,

it was probably the best photographic subject that I've ever had in any category. The elegant Ellington was an outstanding individual. Ooh. The shadow of one had the most incredible vocal instrument anyone ever possessed. I meant. Billy Horney was completely different. The soul that came through in her singing looked reflected her lifestyle which was pretty rough. I have some pictures of her that are pretty sad and they show the suffering and the pain that she went through. So I've made a selection of those that don't reflect that so much because Karsh told me when I left him.

He's always telling the truth, Herman, but in terms of beauty. Smiling at me. An elephant's Gerald is gay and happy and swinging and melodic and gorgeous. When she is perhaps my estimation, one of the most talented in the broad sense, musicians ever. Everybody likes Quincy Jones. There's a one for the graphic that's going to be in 1955. I've had several different girlfriends say. I mean that's the fact that they're favorite fiction. I guess it was a kind of fearlessness and still. I do listen to everything else. He saw it before I saw it. We were just a little kind of make a living and doing sessions with everybody. Dean Copeland, while he averaged some sunny steps and basically everything.

It was the same kind of... There was no money in it. I did get a call occasionally from downbeat or metronome magazine, but they would pay $10, so you couldn't make a living with that. I had to do other kinds of photography to support myself. In 1956, a woman, Herman had photographed introducing to her boyfriend, a jazz buff named Mom and Randall. He invited Herman to be his photographer on a research trip to Asia. For several months, they toured the big cities and backward 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 broccoli record company. Eddie and Nicole had started a revolution of the styles of record companies in Paris because, for a conservative company, it was like took-it-a-town cylinder,

and some of these companies felt so very spayed, and the guys still wore baller hats and so forth, and there they had all, all, all a aristocrat, aristocratic attitude, since once we've had nothing to do with the record business. Nicole Barkley, who earlier had purchased some of Herman's photographs, turned to him for a new work. The distinctive hip style, she knew he could deliver. Herman's long stint as an ex-patriot was about to begin. I came in with a market approach, and the art directors liked it, so I began to do a lot of fashion and a lot of commercial photography. Once in Paris, Herman's client list, who 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. I don't know anybody against those kind of assignments, but this guy was crazy. With an unbelievable cut glance in this pocket, and future wife Elizabeth, as his assistant, Herman set off on yet another exploration of the exotic coaches 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 to up to Nepal to Kathmandu. We went to Kashmir, lived on a houseboat, made out of Cedarwood. We went all through India to some extraordinary places. And then I came back to Munich with the pictures, and did a show for Henry said, Bravo, where do you want to go next? For a year, the chips continued to forefront 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 health care 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 were playing. And we were sitting on a porch one day having tea. And the afternoon on 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 meet 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's coming with me. They drove to this 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. In 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-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 move into this complete picture, almost desert island. I remember the beach right next to our house. It's good out there, perfect. No electricity, no gas, no telephone, no running water. As we lived permanently, I put in electrical, I put in lights with solar panels on the roof. I installed the water system to do all 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 this studio space in Paris.

It's very free. I realize now 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. It was, it was tough sort of facing reality. The money that I had saved was gone and I was flat broke. And I couldn't lock on a rock director's door with an old portfolio. So I dug out the jazz negatives. And I went to the two best galleries and one didn't return 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 this special photography 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. You know, 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 chord with the public. His newfound fame began landing him gigs with high profile performance seeking the Leonard look. When Herman showed his photos in Washington, D.C., they attracted the usual large crowds and one very special visitor. I said to him a gallery opening in Washington and his photographs said, you know, your work belongs in Smithsonian. He seems 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 extraordinary talented individuals in the photographic medium, which is something that's irreducible to any other medium. You can't get in print and type and sound or in touch but a photograph can give you like a song, captures the moment in time, this popular successful and exposed. It owns that time, nothing can take that away from it and it's the same with the photographs that Herman was talking about. As a curator, it's fascinating to me and even inspiring to stand on a museum floor and watch how people will come by and he 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. My first saw Herman's pictures, I thought there was a type of portrait show that would be up to me a nightlife and things about music and things about these individual musicians there. I really hadn't seen and similar attempts at trying to do music or picture. Once I got to know Herman, he was back down a little bit, it was clear to me that his technical finesse in these situations and he really put his photography at a level, both as an image maker and as a printmaker when Herman does in the dark room, this is hardly extraordinary. Oh, I love printing. I think that's almost as creative. A part is not mostly on 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 time. And then you meet somebody like with Marcelus who is the big up coming that he's already arrived. Genius of the puppet of these days. I went to his house, became an hour late for the session, but apologized profusely. I said, alright already, you know, I understand. His mother said, sit down and have some gumball.

And I said, ah, this is paradise. I want to do a book about what it is about New Orleans that appeals to me. 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 that will not become quite as the number of them. And of course, the music scene is which is extraordinary here. And the history of this place is fascinating. Compared to the history of other times 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 what's happening today that I could record. Well, this is yet to come and be more deeply proud. You think you've seen the sun, but you ain't seen it shy.

He's at this passion for photography. And he's turned it into such a high art. I remember when I was young, the photography was not even allowed in the Museum of Modern Art. They didn't consider it in art form. Now, of course, it's very well accepted. And he goes right to the top of the list. I mean, no one should have guessed better than who you wanted.