“Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present,” the first major museum exhibition to acknowledge photographers for their creative and collaborative role in the history of rock and roll, will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum. The exhibition is curated by photographic historian and author Gail Buckland and features many rare and never-before-exhibited photographs.
From its earliest days, rock and roll was captured in photographs that personalized and frequently eroticized the musicians. Photographers were handmaidens to the rock-and-roll revolution, and their work communicates the social and cultural transformations that rock helped bring about from the 1950s to the present. This exhibition is a history not of rock and roll, but of the men and women who have photographed it and given the music its visual identity.
Featuring approximately 175 works by 105 photographers, Who Shot Rock & Roll is organized in six sections: images taken behind the scenes; snapshots of young musicians at the beginning of their careers; photographs of live performances that display the energy of the bands on stage; images of the crowds and fans; portraits that go beyond the surface and celebrity of the musicians; and conceptual images and album covers highlighting the creative and collaborative efforts between the image makers and the subjects.
Among the works on view are such iconic images as William “Red” Robertson’s erotic 1955 photo of a pelvis-thrusting Elvis Presley that appeared on his first album; The Clash’s London Calling album cover by Pennie Smith depicting Paul Simonon smashing his Fender bass guitar; the contact sheet of Bob Gruen’s portrait of John Lennon in a sleeveless New York City T-shirt; Don Hunstein’s photograph of Bob Dylan walking with his girlfriend Suze Rotolo down a snowy Greenwich Village street; David LaChapelle’s image of Lil Kim as a bikini-clad cop; and Anton Corbijn’s shoot of U2 for their Joshua Tree album. The exhibition will also feature photographs by Diane Arbus, Annie Leibovitz, Woodstock photographer Barry Feinstein, Jim Marshall, Ryan McGinley, Linda McCartney, Mark Seliger, and Albert Watson.
Most of the photographs in the exhibition were uncovered in the photographers’ own files. Rarely if ever exhibited pictures include a 1963 photograph by Philip Townsend of the Rolling Stones; an image of James Brown surrounded by female fans shot by actor Dennis Hopper; the working photographs and album cover by Jean-Paul Goude of Grace Jones for Island Life; the contact sheet from Bob Gruen’s famous 1974 rooftop shoot of John Lennon; the full sequence of never-before-exhibited photographs by Ed Caraeff of Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967; the 1976 photograph by Roberta Bayley used on the Ramones first album; Amy Winehouse on her wedding day by Max Vadukul; the four classic 1967 Beatles portraits by Richard Avedon; Ike and Tina Turner at Club Paradise in Memphis in 1962 by the African-American photographer Ernest Withers; and an approximately nine-by-seven-foot tour-de-force by German photographer Andrea Gursky of Madonna performing in 2001.
The exhibition will also include music videos by artists featured in the exhibition, an eighty-image slide show by Henry Diltz, and a rock-and-roll chronology made from actual album covers.
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