Art Tatum, Silhouette, New York

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Art Tatum, Silhouette, New York

Artist Herman Leonard American, 1923 - 2010

Date1953; printed 1990

Dimensionsimage: 15 x 13 9/16 in. (38.1 x 34.4 cm)
sheet: 19 7/8 x 16 in. (50.5 x 40.6 cm)

Mediumgelatin-silver print

ClassificationPhotographs

Credit LinePurchased with funds given by the Harold Jaffe Family and the University of Toledo Humanities Institute

Object number

1991.25

Not on View

Collections

Works on Paper

Exhibition HistoryTMA About Face Sept.30 - Dec.31 2005.

Toledo Museum of Art, Refraction/Reflection, April 20-September 2, 2012.

Toledo Museum of Art, Framing Fame: 19th- & 20th-century Celebrity Photography, March 4–June 4, 2017.

Label TextArt Tatum—the beloved Toledo-born jazz pianist who influenced, astounded, confused, and intimidated a generation of jazz musicians with his endless imagination and virtuosity—was captured in this photograph as a dark presence silhouetted against a shadow-stained backdrop, his hands poised above the light-kissed keys of a grand piano. The reflected light brings focus to the classically trained hands Art Tatum, Silhouette, New York that fused astonishing technique with a graceful sense of swing. Herman Leonard has been characterized as “the greatest jazz photographer in the history of the genre.” A graduate of Ohio University, the only university to offer a degree in photography in the early 1940s, Leonard went on to apprentice with the master portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh. In 1949 Leonard established a studio in Greenwich Village, from which he ventured to jazz clubs on Broadway, 52nd Street, and Harlem, where he befriended and photographed some of the greatest performers in jazz history.