As one of the greatest jazz photographers in the world, Herman Leonard captured a whole musical era in print, gaining intimate access to and the trust of the genre’s greatest stars. His death in August was a huge loss to photography and music. Clash interviewed Herman in 2008, but the proposed feature never ran. Here, finally, is our tribute to a visual genius…
"I decided to become a photographer when I was about eight-years-old,” Herman revealed, “when I saw my brother developing pictures in his little amateur darkroom. I was just fascinated by how he took a blank piece of paper and put it in some liquid and all of a sudden an image came up. It was like magic, so that fascinated me.” This childhood attraction led to a degree in photography from Ohio University, where he graduated in 1947, then an apprenticeship with famed portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh.
A year later, Herman had his own studio in New York. From this base, he became immersed in the city’s thriving jazz scene. By giving the local clubs free prints, he was given free entry and allowed to set up his equipment. This was a project run on passion – it was impossible at that time to make a living from jazz photography. Herman’s image catalogue looks like a who’s who of jazz’s golden era: Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong make up a small selection of his photos. His favourite subject? “The most fun was Dizzy Gillespie because he was a clown,” Herman chuckles. “He was a funny guy and he loved to perform and he loved to have pictures taken. He became my best friend in the music world.”
The subjects Clash specifically chose to discuss with Herman are in the two pictures presented here – Billie Holiday pouring her soul into the microphone, enveloped in smoke, and Frank Sinatra, reaching out for a high note, looking out over his audience. Herman recalls one experience with Holiday, whose drink, drug and relationship problems were infamous: “I did an assignment for [producer] Norman Granz in 1955, a recording session in New York. When [Billie] walked into the recording studio I looked at her and she just looked awful, like she hadn’t been to bed for weeks. I said to Norman, ‘I can’t shoot this! You can’t use these pictures on your album covers!’ And he said, ‘Herman, you get your ass out there and shoot, it may be your last chance.’ And it was for me – although she died a couple of years later, I never saw her again. When she stepped up to the microphone that voice came out so pure and so clear and clean it was amazing.”
Herman recalls shooting this Sinatra portrait in Monte Carlo, when Ol’ Blue Eyes was performing at Grace Kelly’s Red Cross benefit show. “I was privileged to be there because I was very close friends with Quincy Jones, who did the arrangements for that show, so was able to get in and get backstage and that’s the key to shooting a lot of this stuff: having access. Not to the front of the stage – you can’t get anything that way – but backstage; the impromptu stuff, things that the audience never see. That’s the key to getting interesting work out of this subject matter.”
Fashion photography took Herman to Paris in the Fifties, Europe becoming his home until his return to the US in the early Nineties. In 2005, his New Orleans home and studio fell prey to Hurricane Katrina, and over eight thousand of his prints were lost forever. Subsequently, Herman moved to California for the remainder of his life.
As our interview concluded, Herman laughed at the idea of retirement. Indeed, he kept working even into his eighty-seventh year. Our interview is peppered with cursing and laughter – his was an inextinguishable spirit to the end. He left us with this bit of advice, passing his wisdom and experience onto aspiring photographers: “You’ve got to love what you do and have an instinctive taste for composition, colour and light. Then again it’s all a matter of opinion; what’s good and what’s not good. I look at photographs that have received prizes and millions of dollars and I look at them and I say, ‘That’s a piece of shit’, but I look at other photographs that have received no recognition and I say, ‘That’s a wonderful piece of work’. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Words by Simon Harper
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