from The Telegraph:

Starting in the late 1940s, he chronicled a musical era over the ensuing decades with pictures taken in New York, Paris and London. The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, has more than 130 Leonard photographs in its permanent collection.

His images helped to shape the visual archetype of the jazz musician. With their rich blacks, whites and silvers, they can strike the beholder, as one critic observed of jazz itself, “like the sound of surprise”.

As well as capturing musicians in performance, Leonard’s lens also recorded them off duty, and his portfolio contained such memorable shots as Louis Armstrong munching a sandwich while contemplating bottles of champagne, or the trumpeter lighting a cigarette as Duke Ellington looks on from the piano.

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Seattle Jazz