Grace Jones performing at Drury Lane Theater, London, 1981, by David Corio. A live-performance shot that is a tour de force of line. Gelatin silver print. ©David Corio
:Before rock and roll became cliché, it had many handmaidens. Among the most willing were the professional photographers who played a collaborative role in pushing through the societal changes that rock and roll demanded.
From frenetic performance photographs with light and line acutely defined to private, near-voyeuristic moments, rock photographers created an art form as unique as the times they documented.
While the works of individual photographers have been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other prestigious institutions, the genre itself has never been accorded an overview in a major museum. Viewed in context with other genres that have made the transition from commercial photography to art photography, it is time for rock and roll to be accepted into the pantheon.
That is the motivation behind the exhibition, "Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present," on view through January 31 at the Brooklyn Museum.
"It is not the subject that makes art photography but the photographer's ability to communicate and express and explore," photographic historian and author of a book by the same title, Gail Buckland, explained.
Music alone, Buckland believes, could not create the revolution. "It was a bilateral evolution of music and pictures. The photos spread the musicians' images, showed people what to wear, how to cut their hair."
Composition, the horizon line and the contrast between Dylan and the Liverpudlian waifs make this Barry Feinstein photo a short story, 1966. Lender: ©Barry Feinstein
Clearly, before MTV, fans identified with photographs on album covers, in
Rolling Stone
and
Creem
magazines. When rock and roll made the covers of
Time
and
Life
, the establishment went into shock. Whether embracing it or preaching against it, there was no doubt in anyone's mind of what rock and roll looked like. From the first shot of Elvis at work, taken by a commercial photographer in Florida named William V. "Red" Robertson, there was a rhythm, a motion to the stills that had not been seen before. Of course, part of the reason is that no rocker prior to Elvis commanded the stage the way he did or was photographed as often.
Don Huntein's 1963 photo of Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo walking arm in arm on a snowy Greenwich Village Street, a photo from the album cover of
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan,
resonates with intimacy and promise even today.
That is the nature of rock and roll photography. It takes you behind the scenes, personalizes the stars, gives you a mosh pit view of the band. The only way to get closer is to be on stage with the band.
Which is why, as Buckland stated, "Who Shot Rock & Roll" is "an exhibition that is accessible without diminishing the scholarship or curatorial work."
