Miles Davis Portrait: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Weeks after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, this framed 1948 image of renowned musician and composer Miles Davis was found floating on eight feet of water that filled the photo studio of Herman Leonard in the Lakeview District of New Orleans. Thousands of other photographs of jazz greats were lost in Herman's studio, but a few had been framed and bubble-wrapped, awaiting shipment to galleries around the world. The bubble wrap served as a life preserver, keeping the frames from sinking but allowing enough water to seep in to dissolve emulsion around the edges of these portraits, creating a new spectrum of hurricane-generated photographic effects.

For over sixty years, Herman Leonard has been striving to capture the sight and soul of jazz performers with his stark black-and-white photography. His base in New Orleans exposed him to a rich mix of musical traditions, settings, and jazz artists. After Katrina swept through and swept away his work, he relocated to California, but carried with him the film negatives for his life's work that had been stored elsewhere, on dry land.

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: 2005
• Associated Date: August - September 2005
• depicted: Davis, Miles
• photographer: Leonard, Herman
• Object Name: Portrait
• place made: United States: Louisiana, New Orleans
• referenced: United States: Louisiana
• referenced: United States: Louisiana, New Orleans
• related event: Hurricane Katrina
• ID Number: 2006.3055.01
• catalog number: 2006.3055.01
• nonaccession number: 2006.3055
• Credit Line: Gift of Herman Leonard
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.