Herman snapshot beyond classic black and white

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Herman Leonard snapped this 1990 color photo of Pioneer Press contributor Karie Angell Luc in San Francisco. View Leonard’s black and white images of greats like Marilyn Monroe, Tony Bennett and Paul Newman at www.hermanleonard.com

Updated: October 30, 2011 1:28AM

It will be one year on Aug. 14 since the world lost legendary jazz photographer Herman Leonard, who captured smoky black and white images of greats like Quincy Jones, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, Charlie Parker, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong and Nat King Cole.

Leonard, who had four children and was honored in the 2011 Grammys “In Memoriam” tribute, was 87 when he died in Los Angeles.

It wasn’t that long ago when I first heard Herman’s raspy voice. I met him in 1990 when I was a Chicago public relations specialist. I accompanied Herman to media gigs where he pitched his 1985 photography book, “The Eye of Jazz.” I watched in the wings during live radio and television broadcasts. His 10 city national art gallery tour, which featured Herman’s stunning photograph collection, was sponsored by Chicago’s North Shore-based Gilbey’s Gin.

For a while, I kept in touch with Herman, even sending him a box with a framed, autographed watercolor print by my artist husband, Terry Luc. Terry designed a promotional t-shirt for Chicago’s Andy’s Jazz Club at 11 E. Hubbard St. Herman wanted the poster. When I phoned to verify its arrival, Herman said something like, “Wow, thanks!”

Had he expected something smaller shipped inside a cardboard tube?

After I left full-time work to raise my children, I heard Herman had fallen in love with New Orleans. My husband and I wondered if he kept that Andy’s print, or was it in storage?

After August 2005, the real question was: What was left after Herman’s home and studio were flooded during Hurricane Katrina? Thousands of prints were lost. Thankfully, an estimated 60,000 negatives were safely stored off-site.

Herman relocated to Los Angeles. A modern day Georges Seurat with a new view of pointillism, Herman bravely faced technology, transferring black and white imagery from time-honored negatives into digitized pixel dots or squares.

I often wanted to pick up the phone to say, “Hi, remember me?”

Why did I lose touch? I could have emailed via Herman’s website. Was I afraid to exhaustively catch up, explaining a timeline of six kids after morning sickness?

I don’t know.

Several weeks before school let out this past June, I searched plastic bins for photos of my two daughters. Annie, a senior, and Marie, an eighth-grader, would soon graduate. Their schools needed memory montage photos. I found what I needed plus more.

There it was: A 1990 photo of my former self in Sally Jessy Raphael bug eye glasses — a snapshot of a person who pretty much hates to be photographed (just ask my family). I am standing alone outside of a San Francisco television station.

I was pregnant with my first child, Orrin. No baby bump yet. No model’s couture clothing which Herman photographed at fashion shoots — my short frame sported my favorite Esprit shorts outfit. I recognize that look: Awful morning sickness. Over lunch, I recall Herman offering words of encouragement about how this too shall pass as I suffered through probably a sandwich.

Who took the snapshot? Obviously not me. I asked the master himself to take my picture using my inferior camera.

Herman graciously agreed. He could have said no. I am in color via eyes that chronicled post-war American jazz history using film-noir photography.

As I type, next to me is Herman’s Eye of Jazz coffee table book which I have cherished since the 1990 tour.

Famous musicians photographed by Herman attended his gallery exhibitions. On Page 80, saxophonist James Moody wrote: “To Angell, best wishes to you and yours, James Moody.”

Page 130 has musician Ray Brown’s autograph near his 1950 Birdland photo with Ella Fitzgerald taken on her birthday near New York City’s 52nd Street.

Page 13 offers parting words near a 1955 portrait of the smiling photographer. “To Karie, you are wonderful! Stay that way, Love, Herman Leonard, June 1990.”

Like that one famous gas station scene in the 1984 science fiction movie “The Terminator,” where a young man takes a happenstance photo of a pregnant Sarah Connor (who is expecting her firstborn son), my 1990 snapshot has me also frozen in time, expecting my first child.

In one of the film’s famous lines, Sarah Connor said she had “loved a lifetime’s worth.”

While the moments we have with others may be short lived, for me, those memories merge into stepping stones I often revisit on my journey.

Of having the full attention of a photographer’s eye over a simple lunch, of my memory of a man of that hour (who dished over his love for his family and of the joy my future children would bring to me), let me say this: Simply calling Herman Leonard my friend in the few hours we had together was a lifetime’s worth.