In Memoriam: Paul "Jazz" Jasmin (1935-2025)

L’Oeil de la Photographie

May 29, 2025 

In Memoriam: Paul "Jazz" Jasmin (1935-2025)

 Paul “Jazz” Jasmin left us a few days ago, Fahey/Klein Gallery sent us the following obituary along with a selection of photographs to remember him.

It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of Paul “Jazz” Jasmin, who died on Saturday, May 24th, at his home in Los Angeles. “Jazz”, the revered photographer, teacher, and quiet chronicler of “dreamers”, passed away peacefully at the age of 90. For decades, Jasmin used the streets around his apartment, below the Hollywood hills, as his photographic backdrop in capturing the people who drifted through Los Angeles. Each of his frames were imbued with “becoming” – and with the “dreams harbored inside” his subjects.

Born in Helena, Montana in 1935, Jasmin left his small-town beginnings in 1954 for a life of global wandering and boundless artistic pursuit. His early life read like a novel: painting in Paris, acting in New York, sketching in Morocco — and finally, arriving in Los Angeles, a city as restless and radiant as he was. It was in L.A., the city that became his muse, that Jasmin found the essence of his artistic voice. He lived a dozen creative lives before finding his true love in photography, thanks to a nudge from his dear friend Bruce Weber. As a teacher for many years at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, he nurtured generations of artists with the same sensitivity and grace that marked his own work. He didn’t just teach technique; he taught people to imagine intensely — with empathy and wonder.

To his friends, he was “Jazz” — a name that suited his soul. And indeed, Jasmin’s photographs sang a multitude of emotions. As Bruce Weber put so beautifully, “Looking at photographs is a little bit like playing different tunes in your head and living out the fantasies that lie within the melodies and lyrics.”

“Paul Jasmin is undoubtedly one of the most inspiring photographers we’ve had the honor of knowing and exhibiting. His passion for glamour, fantasy, and the magic of photography was palpable. He always saw art with fresh eyes – even when those eyes happened to be 90 years old. Imagery excited ‘Jazz’. To watch his wonder and joy at the majesty of ‘creating’ was, and is, such a gift that all here will treasure.” – David Fahey, Fahey/Klein Gallery

Paul Jasmin leaves behind countless friends, students, and muses who carry his spirit forward. And Los Angeles —his eternal muse — will never quite look the same without him. He is deeply loved and is greatly missed.