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.
The son of Romanian immigrants, Herman Leonard was born on March 6 1923 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. When he was nine he saw an image being developed in his brother's darkroom and became hooked on photography. He enrolled at Ohio University in Athens, the only university at the time to offer a degree in the subject.
His college studies were interrupted during the Second World War when he served with the US Army in Burma with the 13th Mountain Medical Battalion as an anaesthetist. Returning to college, he graduated in 1947 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
Leonard started his photography career the same year as an apprentice with the master portrait photographer, Yousuf Karsh. After photographing Albert Einstein, Martha Graham and other cultural icons, Leonard was encouraged by Karsh to break out on his own, telling him: " I know you have it in you to be a great photographer. Go out and conquer."
In 1948 Leonard moved to New York and immersed himself in the jazz scene there, making deals with club owners to photograph rehearsals in exchange for photographs for their marquees. Using a large 4-by-5 Speed Graphic camera, he shot Art Tatum, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan and countless other jazz greats in the smoky haze of jazz clubs.
His intention was "to create a visual diary of what I heard, to make people see the way the music sounded". Leonard became acquainted with many of the musicians he photographed and remained lifelong friends with Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones and Tony Bennett.
In 1956 Marlon Brando chose Leonard to be his personal photographer for an extensive research trip to the Far East. In the late 1950s Leonard moved to Paris and continued to photograph the burgeoning jazz scene, while also working in fashion, advertising, travel and editorial photography.
Leonard moved again in 1980, this time to the island of Ibiza, where he remained until 1987. During that time Leonard rediscovered his jazz negatives and in 1985 released his first book, The Eye of Jazz. On his next move, to London, he staged an exhibition of his jazz photographs in 1988 in a gallery at Notting Hill. The show was hugely successful, with more than 10,000 visitors viewing the first retrospective of his work. His first American show was staged in 1989 and toured nationally.
Moving to New Orleans in 1992, he joined the city's vibrant jazz scene and exhibited his work around the world in many one-man shows. He released his second book, Jazz Memories, in 1995.
In 2005 Leonard's home and studio in New Orleans were severely damaged in Hurricane Katrina and his archive of more than 8,000 prints was lost in the flood. But his negatives were saved and housed at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
He rebuilt his life and business in Los Angeles, and in 2006 was the subject of the BBC documentary Saving Jazz. This focused on his painful return home and his efforts to rebuild his life's work. In 2008 Leonard was the first photographer to be awarded a Grammy Foundation Grant for Preservation and Archiving, enabling him to digitise, catalogue and preserve his collection of nearly 60,000 jazz negatives.
Last year, Leonard was the official photographer for the Montreal Jazz Festival, photographing stars such as Tony Bennett and Dave Brubeck.
In January of this year, Leonard was a guest of Lenny Kravitz in the Bahamas, where he photographed the musician in the studio working on his latest album. Leonard remained active, photographing, printing and working on exhibition, documentary and book projects.
Herman Leonard is survived by his four children.
