Legendary jazz photographer, Herman Leonard, dies at 87

Herman Leonard, a photographer best known for his iconic images of such jazz greats as Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and Miles Davis, has died. He was 87. Leonard died Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, a family spokeswoman said. No cause was given. He had been living in Los Angeles since Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, flooding his home and destroying thousands of prints.

"I took advantage of being a photographer to get myself into the clubs so I could sit in front of Charlie Parker," he told The Times (LA) in March before the opening of an exhibit on jazz photography at the

The images did much more than that. They documented a musical era and cemented Leonard's status.

He was born in Allentown in 1923 and became interested in photography early on thanks to his older brother. He attended Ohio University to study photography but that was interrupted by a stint in the Army from 1943 to 1945. Leonard returned to college and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1947.

After working as an apprentice for famed portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh, Leonard moved to New York in 1948 and started becoming immersed in the jazz scene. Using a 4-by-5 Speed Graphic camera, he shot Art Tatum, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan and countless other jazz greats.

...Ellington watching Ella Fitzgerald sing in 1948. Dexter Gordon sitting, holding a cigarette and balancing his saxophone on a knee. There was music, amazing access and plenty of smoke.

"The smoke was part of the atmosphere of those days and dramatized the photographs a lot, maybe over-stylized them a bit," he told The Times in 1990.

Leonard became famous for the smoky, backlighted black-and-white photos he took in dark jazz clubs beginning in the late 1940s.Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles. "I got to listen to music in person. That enriched me. The money didn't. And I tried to make images that would satisfy me."Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, told the Morning Call in Allentown, Pa., in 1999. "He's an artist." (from LA Times, Keith Thursby)

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