Rise up Singing: Jazz Portraits by Herman Leonard

Photographer Herman Leonard (1923-2010) was renowned for his photographs of many of the 20th century’s greatest jazz artists. This exhibition features Leonard’s portraits of jazz legends such as Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, and Lena Horne.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Whether or not you go, The Jazz Image: Masters of Jazz Photography is a volume of the great improvisational American jazz musicians of the mid-20th century, who inspired a generation of photographers to develop a looser, moodier style of visual expression. That evocative approach is on striking display in The Jazz Image. Covering six decades of performers —from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to John Coltrane and Miles Davis—this unique collection is as much a comprehensive catalogue of jazz greats as it is a salute to the photographers who captured them. 

Lee Tanner, a leading authority on jazz photography, has selected works—by such noted jazz photographers as Herman Leonard, Bob Willoughby, Milt Hinton, and Bill Claxton—that are iconic, candid, explosive, and intimate. They provide a simultaneous look at jazz, photography, and America from 1935 into the 1990s.

The Jazz Image: Masters of Jazz Photography