NEW ORLEANS FESTIVALS - Jazz Fest Features

Herman Leonard

Photographer Herman Leonard created one of the premier picture archives of jazz. His collection is housed in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. Now a resident of New Orleans, the just turned 80-year-old Leonard continues to photograph famous and destined-to-be famous jazz musicians.

The jazz scene in New York first beckoned to him in the late 1940s. In clubs from Broadway and 52nd Street to Harlem, he captured Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and many others. Leonard put those photos away while he worked as Marlon Brando's personal photographer, went to Paris to do fashion and advertising and worked for European Playboy. But in the 50s, he rediscovered the negatives and the subject of jazz regained his attention.

His first jazz exhibition was staged in London in 1988. Since then his name and work have become a part of jazz history and contemporary popular culture.