Hail and Farewell
Herman Leonard, "Frank Sinatra, Monte Carlo, 1958."
Jazz photographer Herman Leonard died last weekend. His iconic photographs, including the one of Frank Sinatra at right, are said to have “caught jazz itself” and represented the “whole spirit” of his musician subjects. I get impatient with commentary like that, though Leonard’s work had an undeniable signature and impact. Instead, I like the quote on Leonard’s website from Quincy Jones:
Herman’s camera tells the truth, and makes it swing. Musicians loved to see him around. No surprise; he made us look good.
The quote is a great paraphrase of a famous line from an Emily Dickinson poem — and Sinatra looks very good indeed in this image. It shows the star with his usual dapper grace, but the view from behind is a surprise. Instead of the charismatic face and voice, we see a dark silhouette: Sinatra framed by the light and adulation of fame itself, in the very moment of acknowledging it. The blurry foreground and blank background evoke the vagueness of immortality – Sinatra is in some other realm beyond or above everyday life. Alone, yes, but with an implied audience of the infinite. The slightly diagonal pose, the balanced S-curve of the body, the inevitable wisps of smoke rising to the heavens….these all contribute to a portrait of genius that is both conventional and iconoclastic. Great artists make art their way.
Leonard’s work is published in two photo collections, The Eye of Jazz and Jazz (available in November).
For another, written portrait of Sinatra see Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” (1965), which Esquire considers one of the best pieces of nonfiction it has ever published.
In: contemporary, music, photography · Tagged with: Frank Sinatra, Herman Leonard, jazz