Phillip Leonian Photo Archive

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Phillip Leonian Photo Archive

This page is devoted to the life and work of the late photographer, Phillip Leonian.

For inquiries into Phillip's work or for permissions, please contact Judith Lane at
[email protected]

Phillip Leonian (1927-2016) was an innovative photographer who specialized in advertising and editorial work in New York from the 1950s through the 80s. His clients included IBM, AT&T, Alka Seltzer, General Foods, General Motors, General Electric, Time, Look, World Tennis, and Spor

ts Illustrated. Phillip had a particular interest in capturing the essence of movement through photography and he spent his life exploring ways to portray both an object in motion and the very motion itself. Do do all of this in a single photographic image seemed to define both time and space

Phillip and his wife, Edith, were known to be far-thinking, fair, and generous people. In 2010 this inherent generosity led to the creation of the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, which has a mission to raise awareness of and appreciation for photography and photographers. The Foundation specializes in assisting smaller, non-profit art spaces with strong photography exhibitions, publications, and community educational programs.

Phillip Leonian's photographs are in the permanent collections of:
Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Gruber Collection, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX
Cooper Hewitt, New York, NY

01/20/2026

We are pleased to announce that over 300 items from the Phillip Leonian Archive are now in the collection of the The Library of Congress!

The acquisition consists of photographs, posters, ephemera, publications, matted transparencies, and much, MUCH more, including:

1. Sports Illustrated Magazine, January 26, 1970.
Janet Lynn [in Blue]. C-print. 1968. Photograph by Phillip Leonian.
Janet Lynn [in Red]. C-print. 1968. Photograph by Phillip Leonian.

2. Sports Illustrated Magazine. March 5, 1973.
Janet Lynn [Brooding and Alone...]. Gelatin silver print. 1973. Photograph by Phillip Leonian.
Janet Lynn [Phillip Leonian Self Portrait in Mirror]. Gelatin silver print. 1973. Photograph by Phillip Leonian.
Janet Lynn [Disguised in Everyday Clothes...]. Gelatin silver print. 1973. Photograph by Phillip Leonian.

3. David Bean. "Carnegie Hall, Mon. Oct. 3, 1966." Vinyl Record. 1966.
Flyer for David Bean's Carnegie Hall performance, Mon. Oct. 3, 1966, 8 p.m.
David Bean Walking. Gelatin silver print. 1966. Photograph by Phillip Leonian.

4. Assorted Philco advertising materials, featuring photographs by Phillip Leonian. 1966.

5. Philco Advertisement Shoot PR [Phillip Leonian inspecting film]. Gelatin silver print. 1966.
Philco Advertisement Shoot PR [Phillip Leonian inspecting film]. Gelatin silver print. 1966.
Philco Advertisement Shoot PR [Phillip Leonian with switchboard and operator]. Gelatin silver print. 1966.

6. Postcard featuring Dan Immerfall from the 1979 U.S. Speed Skating Team.
Dan Immerfall. C-print. 1979.
Postcard featuring Peter Mueller from the 1979 U.S. Speed Skating Team.
Peter Mueller. C-print. 1979.
Postcard featuring Leah Poulos-Mueller from the 1979 U.S. Speed Skating Team.
Leah Poulos-Mueller. C-print. 1979.

7. Eric Heiden. C-print. 1979. Photograph by Phillip Leonian.
The Washington Post Magazine. February 10, 1980.
Champion Magazine. Winter 1980.

01/19/2026

The good new continues to roll in:
The New Orleans Museum of Art has acquired 18 works by Phillip Leonian!

The acquisition includes: five gelatin silver prints from Phil's Walking series, five from his Mini Cine series, two from his 1974 photoshoot with Carmen de Lavallade for Essence magazine, two original pieces from his Waterworks series, as well as four lifetime inkjet prints of athletes Muhammad Ali and Steve Prefontaine. Whew, what a selection!

1. Walter Hoyne [from Waterworks series]. Polaroid emulsion lift on resin-coated paper. 1976.
2. Talking Dirty [from Mini Cine series]. Gelatin silver print. 1973.
3. Peter Samelson Walking [Peter the Magician Walks]. Gelatin silver print. 1978.

01/17/2026

Happy Birthday to boxer Muhammad Ali (1942-2016)!

Muhammad Ali Smiling. Color inkjet print. Printed 2014. This print is now in the collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art.

01/16/2026

We have more good news:
The George Eastman Museum has acquired 20 photographs by Phillip Leonian!

The acquisition includes a small selection from Phil's Walking, Turns, Mini Cine, and Transcendentals series, as well as 12 images of athletes, four of which are shown here:

1. Mary Carillo [Tennis Instructional, Low Stroke]. Gelatin silver print. 1981.
2. Roxanne Pierce [Gymnastics, Uneven Bars]. 1971.
3. Wendy Cluff [Gymnastics, Balance Beam Dismount]. 1971.
4. Swing [Baseball, Golf, Tennis]. 1982.

01/15/2026

Good news:
Eleven posters featuring Phillip Leonian's photography are now part of the Poster House collection!

1. Alka Selzer. "Plop Plop, Fizz Fizz." 1978.
2. Wrangler. "Wrangler Wroll-in." 1979.
3. Racquet Magazine. 1976.

01/14/2026

We are excited to announce that we have received the advance copies of Man in Motion: The Life and Work of Phillip Leonian!

An homage to both Phillip and Edith Leonian, the book is a labor of love that contains contributions from curators Kristen Gresh, Marvin Heiferman, and Anne Wilkes Tucker, gallerist Howard Greenberg, and Judith Lane, the Leonians' longtime employee and steward of their legacy. It secures Phil's place in the canon of motion photography, and it gives insight into the Leonians' lives as dedicated partners, generous mentors, and whip-smart experts who were deeply involved with the photography world.

Once the final copies have been shipped across the Atlantic at the end the month, Man in Motion will be gifted to select recipients.

01/13/2026

Happy Birthday to photographer Phillip Leonian (1927-2016)!

As a birthday gift to Phil, we are thrilled to announce that the Phillip Leonian Archives are now located at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin! Phil's photographs, contact sheets, negatives, slides, bill files, and so much more are now accessible to researchers.

Here's what the office looked like the day the archive was shipped out, all 203 boxes—it was quite a sight to see!

01/12/2026

We are saddened to hear of the passing of prima ballerina Carmen de Lavallade (1931 - 2025).

Carmen was the second dancer of Creole/African descendant to serve as prima ballerina of the Met Opera, succeeding her cousin Janet Collins in 1956. In the 1960s, she became a principal guest performer with Alvin Ailey Dance Company and toured with the company in its first European tour. In 1970, she became a choreographer and performer-in-residence at the Yale School of Drama, then became a professor, staying at the school until 1980. Ms. de Lavallade received several awards over the span of her career, including an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Juilliard in 2008, the Dance USA Award in 2010, and the Kennedy Center Honors award in 2017.

To remember Carmen, we would like to share a few of our favorite images from her various photoshoots with Phillip Leonian, taken between 1968 to 1974.

1. Carmen de Lavallade [Portrait in Profile]. Gelatin silver print. 1968.
2. Carmen de Lavallade [Portrait with Feathered Sleeves]. C-print. 1968.
3. Carmen de Lavallade [Portrait in Butterfly Print Dress]. Gelatin silver print. 1968.
4. Carmen de Lavallade Walking. Gelatin silver print. 1968. Print in the collection of the George Eastman Museum.
5. Carmen de Lavallade [Body Alive for Essence Magazine]. Gelatin silver print. 1974.
6. Carmen de Lavallade [Body Alive for Essence Magazine]. Gelatin silver print. 1974. Print in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
7. Carmen de Lavallade [Danc-ericizing for Essence Magazine]. Gelatin silver print. 1974.

09/24/2025

We are very excited to be here in Verona, Italy, “on press” for the printing of the upcoming Phillip Leonian book, “Man in Motion: The Life and Work of Phillip Leonian.”

Yolanda Cuomo, our amazing and indefatigable book designer, is here with us, and everything is going smoothly. Day One was an 11-hour day; the first half was spent checking ozalids against the patch pages of final corrections, then we gave the printer (EBS Editoriale Bortolazzi Stei) the go ahead to begin the printing process. An hour later the first page came off the press and we were called down to check it. It was so exciting!!

The printing floor has six or eight printing presses going at the same time. The Leonian book is being printed on a massive press that prints 20 pages on one sheet. The sheet comes off the printer and is placed on a viewing desk so that we can compare it to our sample prints. If there are any color changes that we want, we have to consider how those changes will affect the other images that are along the same line. It’s an exercise in compromise, but fortunately we needed to make changes on only two or three pages, and then the rest of the pages all looked amazing right off the press! Once we OK’d each page, it took an hour to print 1,000 copies of each sheet.

It was a very long day, so it was exhausting — but exhilarating! And tomorrow we go back for more printing 🙂

09/04/2025

BIG NEWS:
The New York Transit Museum has acquired 11 pieces from the Phillip Leonian Archive!

Included in the acquisition are the five (BIG!) subway posters from 1965 shown here, each featuring horses in motion, gently suggesting a visit to the "Big A", or the Aqueduct Racetrack.
**A

09/02/2025

"I got an assignment from Venture to do skiing pictures. I don't ski. I ended up at Mt. Snow with credentials from Venture and asked for cooperation from them. The guy said, do you ski, and I said, no, and he looked at me. He said, how can you photograph skiing if you don't ski. That was the last he would even talk to me. That caused me a lot of concern. It's a bad attitude for him to have, but so many people have it. The fact is that photographers are particularly skilled at seeing and photographing what happens. Some people get tired of pictures of guys jumping over rough terrain or snowdrifts. The pictures get stopped in a thousandth of a second and there's the sun placed just properly. Then cameras got tied to skis and the photograph was from the ski-eye view. I'm not going to do that. First of all, I can't climb to the top because I have no way to get down.

I stood at the bottom of the slope and I looked at skiers. I thought they were supposed to ski down mountains-swisssh, swisssh. Instead, what do I see? Nobody knows how to ski. They all go up there and they come down, but gently. There's none of this bravura stuff going on on a ski slope. I took a wide-angle lens and photographed the ski slope all day. I came back to the studio, got them developed and I went in there and enlarged them with a microscope.

What did I see on that stupid ski slope? I saw people riding on the chair cars up. There were people blowing their noses, smoking ci******es, talking, standing around, walking, shuffling skis through the snow. And if I looked down at the bottom of the slope, they were standing in line or they were eating. They were stacking their skis in racks and things. But damn few were actually skiing. So, all I did was say, here you are. Skiing is fun."
-Phillip Leonian, "Great Moments Extended," interview by Norman Schneider, Camera 35 Magazine 16, no. 3 (April 1972): 29.

Ski Magazine, September 1970 issue. Cover by Phillip Leonian. 1965.

08/28/2025

Lee Witkin (1935-1984) was a pioneer in the photography industry, opening the first commercially successful photography gallery in New York City in 1969. He ran the Witkin Gallery until his death in 1984, giving many now-renowned photographers (Judy Dater, Joel Meyerowitz, Jerry N. Uelsmann) serious exposure to the art market for the first time.

Witkin is shown here, seated in his gallery at 237 East 60th Street, surrounded by framed photographs and stacks of books that lent a comfortable, relaxed atmosphere to the space. He brought the same inviting atmosphere to the gallery's 57th Street location when he relocated in late-1976.

Leonian, Phillip. Lee Witkin in His Old Gallery. Gelatin silver print. 1976.

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