# Lee Jaffe
**Lee Jaffe** (born 1950) is an American artist, photographer, filmmaker, musician, and author known for his intimate photographs of [Bob Marley](https://www.edgepedia.org/bob-marley) and the Wailers, his production of [Peter Tosh](https://www.edgepedia.org/peter-tosh)'s album *Legalize It*, and large-scale multimedia paintings that examine marginalization in American history.[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/) • [2](https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Lee-Jaffe/1FE43E9A9B647DDA) He is sometimes described as the "white Wailer" for his years inside Marley's inner circle.[3](https://www.vogue.com/article/lee-jaffe-hit-me-with-music-interview)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Born | 1950, Bronx, New York; American[2](https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Lee-Jaffe/1FE43E9A9B647DDA) |
| Fields | Painting, photography, film, music production, writing[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/) |
| Reggae years | Lived with Bob Marley and the Wailers in Kingston in the 1970s; played harmonica on *Natty Dread*; produced and photographed Peter Tosh's *Legalize It* (1977)[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/) |
| Painting | Turned to painting in 1983; works described as large-scale multimedia historical assemblage[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/) |
| Basquiat | Met Jean-Michel Basquiat in Los Angeles in 1983 and photographed and traveled with him from 1983 to 1986[4](https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/jean-michel-basquiat-crossroads-/5482) |
| Books | *One Love: Life with Bob Marley and the Wailers* (2003); *Bob Marley & The Wailers: 1973–1976* (2013, French); *Hit Me with Music* (2024)[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/) • [5](https://uklitag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/FA24-Catalog_Rizzoli-only.pdf) |
| Museum exhibitions | Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/) |
## Early life and conceptual art
Jaffe was born in the Bronx to a Jewish family and grew up in New York City. His father was a foreman at a clothing factory and his mother a nurse; he has said his family "were all Communists," and the soundtrack of his youth was the demolition of Bronx buildings for the Cross Bronx Expressway.[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/) • [6](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/bob-marleys-accidental-photographer) Having finished his high school requirements at sixteen, he attended Penn State University, studying American history and literature, art history, and modern philosophy, and left at nineteen.[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/)
After a period playing harmonica and guitar in New York bands, he moved to Brazil, where he joined a circle of experimental filmmakers and directed the 16mm film *Nine Ways of Dying* in the remote mountains. He became close to the Brazilian filmmaker Neville d'Almeida and the artist [Hélio Oiticica](https://www.edgepedia.org/helio-oiticica), collaborating with Oiticica in the April 1970 exhibition "From Body to Earth" in [Belo Horizonte](https://www.edgepedia.org/belo-horizonte).[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/)
Back in New York in 1971, he made films with leading conceptual artists: *Impact* with Vito Acconci and *Brooklyn Bridge* with [Gordon Matta-Clark](https://www.edgepedia.org/gordon-matta-clark), his [Lower East Side](https://www.edgepedia.org/lower-east-side) loft mate. That year he took part in the [Museum of Modern Art](https://www.edgepedia.org/museum-of-modern-art)'s landmark conceptual exhibition "Projects: Pier 18," curated by Willoughby Sharp.[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/) He appears in the well-known 1971 photograph of Matta-Clark and friends roasting a whole pig on a spit under the Brooklyn Bridge, alongside the composers Philip Glass and Dickie Landry, and he made a film of the event called *Pig Roast*.[6](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/bob-marleys-accidental-photographer)
## Jamaica and the Wailers
In 1972, while working with [Island Records](https://www.edgepedia.org/island-records), Jaffe met Bob Marley in a New York hotel room, where Marley played him a cassette of the forthcoming Wailers album *Catch a Fire*. Jaffe followed Marley to Jamaica on what was meant to be a short vacation and stayed for years, living with Marley and the Wailers at their house in Kingston. His own account says five years; a 2024 *New Yorker* profile says three years at the Hope Road house. In that period he served as road manager, booking agent, publicist, travel fixer, and eventually harmonica player, performing on the album *Natty Dread* and helping organize the Wailers' North American tour.[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/) • [6](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/bob-marleys-accidental-photographer)
**Photographs.** Along the way Jaffe took the photographs that make up what the *New Yorker* calls probably the most intimate visual chronicle of the Wailers and their world: Marley with friends in Trench Town, Peter Tosh in a ganja field in his native Westmoreland, and the 1975 visit by the Jackson 5 to Marley's home at Hope Road.[6](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/bob-marleys-accidental-photographer) • [7](https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2024/11/18/hit-me-with-music/) He and Marley remained close until Marley's death from melanoma in 1981.[6](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/bob-marleys-accidental-photographer)
**Peter Tosh and record production.** In Jamaica Jaffe met Peter Tosh, produced his album *Legalize It*, and shot its cover photograph in 1977, showing Tosh smoking a pipe in a field of ganja; he also helped secure a [Columbia Records](https://www.edgepedia.org/columbia-records) deal for the album.[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/) • [8](https://mag.citizensofhumanity.com/blog/2015/12/11/bob-marley-and-lee-jaffe/) In the mid-1980s he produced records for the reggae pioneer Joe Higgs, the Grammy-nominated Wailing Souls, and the dancehall singer Barrington Levy; his discography also includes albums by Morgan Heritage and further Levy releases through 1999.[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/)
## Painting and the American history series
Jaffe returned to New York in 1977 and turned to painting in 1983. His works have been characterized as large-scale multimedia historical assemblage, taking up themes of marginalization in American history: the black performer in America, the cruelty of the fur industry, the relationship of Native Americans to their environment, and what he calls the ambiguity of America's traitors.[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/) A 1986 *Los Angeles Times* review described his paintings and assemblages as working on a large scale in a wide variety of materials, using the metaphor of the ghost image to explore what the reviewer called the hypocrisies of power; the work *What Becomes a Legend Most* arranges three mink stoles over gold leaf punctured by hundreds of nail files, and *The Ghost of Sally Hemmings* depicts [Thomas Jefferson](https://www.edgepedia.org/thomas-jefferson) as floating $2 bills beside a framed portrait of [Sally Hemings](https://www.edgepedia.org/sally-hemings).[9](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-04-18-ca-657-story.html)
His first one-person New York exhibition, prepared in 1983, retold American history with portraits of figures including [Benedict Arnold](https://www.edgepedia.org/benedict-arnold), Sacco and Vanzetti, Nat Turner, John Brown, and the Rosenbergs, rendered with Florentine gold leaf.[10](https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/basquiat-at-galerie-eva-presenhuber/4314) He has exhibited at major museums including Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England.[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/)
## Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jaffe met [Jean-Michel Basquiat](https://www.edgepedia.org/jean-michel-basquiat) in Los Angeles in 1983, and the two set out on a round-the-world trip that produced the "On the Road" series of photographs.[11](https://www.campuscircle.com/review.cfm?r=3293) While Jaffe was preparing his 1983 New York exhibition, he wanted a likeness of Cinque, the West African leader of the 1839 revolt on the Spanish slave ship *La Amistad* (the exhibition text gives 1832), and Basquiat offered to pose as Cinque; a Polaroid of him channeling the pose became the source for the painting *Portrait of Cinque*, a collaboration between the two artists.[10](https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/basquiat-at-galerie-eva-presenhuber/4314) Jaffe's photographs and memoir of their collaboration from 1983 to 1986, including trips to Asia and to [St. Moritz](https://www.edgepedia.org/st-moritz), were published as *Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossroads* (2022).[4](https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/jean-michel-basquiat-crossroads-/5482) A related work, *$5: Poor Man's Counterfeit* (1984), is credited to Jaffe in collaboration with Basquiat, Andy Warhol, and an anonymous counterfeiter.[12](https://dailyartfair.com/artist/lee-jaffe)
## Books and later work
Jaffe's books are *Cordially Yours, Lee Jaffe* (Moderna Museet, 1992, by Rainer Crone and David Moos); *One Love: Life with Bob Marley and the Wailers* (W. W. Norton, 2003, with Roger Steffens), an intimate portrait of the Wailers on the eve of fame; and *Bob Marley & The Wailers: 1973–1976* (Camion Blanc, 2013), an autobiography in French co-written with the Jamaican popular music specialist Jérémie Kroubo Dagnini.[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/) • [13](https://books.google.com/books/about/One_Love.html?id=HPehx8P9l6QC) In 2024 Rizzoli published *Hit Me with Music*, collecting his photographs of Marley and the Wailers from the last three years they performed together.[5](https://uklitag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/FA24-Catalog_Rizzoli-only.pdf) • [7](https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2024/11/18/hit-me-with-music/)
His film credits include *Flow: For Love of Water* (2009), on which he was a producer.[1](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/) In recent years he has photographed the [George Washington Bridge](https://www.edgepedia.org/george-washington-bridge) daily from his apartments on the Manhattan and New Jersey sides, accumulating thousands of images for a multimedia installation with music by Dickie Landry and a poem by the Mohawk-descended writer James Thomas Stevens.[6](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/bob-marleys-accidental-photographer) His work appears in the Museum of Modern Art's artist listing, and his photographs and paintings trade at auction; since 2012 his auction record is 8,057 USD for *Untitled (4 Works)*, sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong in 2017.[14](https://www.moma.org/artists/44912-lee-jaffe) • [2](https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Lee-Jaffe/1FE43E9A9B647DDA)
## References
1. [About Lee Jaffe, leejaffe.com](https://leejaffe.com/about-lee-jaffe/)
2. [Lee Jaffe, MutualArt](https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Lee-Jaffe/1FE43E9A9B647DDA)
3. [Lee Jaffe on Bob Marley, Basquiat, and More, Vogue, March 21, 2025](https://www.vogue.com/article/lee-jaffe-hit-me-with-music-interview)
4. [Icarus Reaches: On Lee Jaffe’s “Jean-Michel Basquiat: Crossroads”](https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/jean-michel-basquiat-crossroads-/5482)
5. [Rizzoli Fall 2024 catalog: Hit Me with Music](https://uklitag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/FA24-Catalog_Rizzoli-only.pdf)
6. [Bob Marley's Accidental Photographer, The New Yorker, October 14, 2024](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/bob-marleys-accidental-photographer)
7. [Hit Me With Music, Jamaica Observer, November 18, 2024](https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2024/11/18/hit-me-with-music/)
8. [Bob Marley and Lee Jaffe, HUMANITY Magazine, 2015](https://mag.citizensofhumanity.com/blog/2015/12/11/bob-marley-and-lee-jaffe/)
9. [WILSHIRE CENTER, Los Angeles Times, April 18, 1986](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-04-18-ca-657-story.html)
10. [Whitehot Recommends: Lee Jaffe's Jean-Michel Basquiat at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Whitehot Magazine, 2019](https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/basquiat-at-galerie-eva-presenhuber/4314)
11. [Lee Jaffe: On the Road With Jean-Michel Basquiat: 1983, Campus Circle](https://www.campuscircle.com/review.cfm?r=3293)
12. [Artist: Lee Jaffe, Daily Art Fair](https://dailyartfair.com/artist/lee-jaffe)
13. [One Love: Life With Bob Marley And The Wailers, Google Books](https://books.google.com/books/about/One_Love.html?id=HPehx8P9l6QC)
14. [Lee Jaffe, MoMA](https://www.moma.org/artists/44912-lee-jaffe)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Visual arts and design › Photographers › Fine art and documentary photographers*
*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*
License: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license