Merry
November 1st, 2009, 01:28 AM
"Who Shot Rock And Roll" Opens at the Brooklyn Museum
Ben Eagle
If rock photography is a "silent window into the world of sound," then "Who Shot Rock & Roll, A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present," curated by Gail Buckland, is the loudest exhibit ever. Opening last night at The Brooklyn Museum, "Who Shot Rock" explores intimacy, passion and the countless other reasons we all love rock and roll in the first place.
Featuring over 175 works, the exhibit is organized into six sections: images taken behind the scenes, performance images, snapshots of musicians at the beginning of their careers, images of crowds and fans, album covers and conceptual images.
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-10-30-225_Buck_9780307270160_art_r1.jpg
Courtesy of Henry Diltz
The images of crowds and fans and the behind-the-scenes shots are the ones that resonate the most, if only for their stark dichotomy. "Madonna, I" taken by Andreas Gursky is a massive picture of Madonna playing before a crowd that seems endless. While Gursky used a computer to edit this image, the effect remains: Madonna and her concerts appear otherworldly.
Elsewhere, Amy Arbus depicts Madonna standing alone with a bowling bag on a street in New York City. Relatable yet confident, Madonna looks surprisingly human -- something that's easy to forget in Gursky's picture.
The exhibit claims to not be a history of rock and roll and its stars, but rather of the "men and women who have photographed it and given the music its visual identity."
Unfortunately, the show has trouble living up to this goal. Moving from one section to another, viewers largely find themselves star-struck. A young Jimi Hendrix looking startlingly sober as he plays backup guitar for Wilson Pickett distracts the viewer from the interesting blurb about the photographer (William "Popsie" Randolph) next to the photo. Jean-Paul Goude's sparse decoration and cut-up Ektachrome would be good studies for any young photographer, but when looking at his photographs of Grace Jones, it's hard to find artistic nuance beyond her goddess-like figure.
Not every photograph, however, is like this. Albert Watson's photographic process begs to be demystified when you view his inexplicable Mick Jagger/leopard amalgamation or his portrait of Michael Jackson that is fractured and reflected numerous times over. Both of these portraits are all the more impressive when you realize they are printed without the aid of computers.
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-10-30-075_Buck_9780307270160_art_r1.jpg
Courtesy of Albert Watson
David LaChapelle, who has two photographs in the exhibit, also draws attention to the craft with his elaborate staging and use of props. You recognize his distinctive work instantly, but in an exhibit full of intimacy and raw energy, his pieces come off as fake and cartoonish.
For a real emphasis on the supposed "handmaidens" to the rock-and-roll revolution, one has to read the book, Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present (http://www.amazon.com/Who-Shot-Rock-Roll-Photographic/dp/0307270165/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256915943&sr=8-1), published by Alfred A. Knopf. The book itself actually preceded the exhibit and is divided solely by photographer and, surprisingly, no other theme. Within its friendly confines and jarring images, a reader can't help but linger over the photos and their accompanying descriptions.
"Who Shot Rock" ended its opening night with a fitting tribute to rock and roll: a performance by Blondie. Front-woman Debbie Harry (sporting jet-black hair almost as an affront to the numerous blonde pictures of her within the exhibit) crooned the audience with all the Blondie hits -- "Call Me", "Rapture" and "Heart of Glass" -- and even a Michael Jackson tribute. And the audience, even though they were strictly told no photographs, snapped pictures throughout the entire performance.
Who could blame them? They just wanted to capture their own shot of rock.
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-10-30-056_Buck_9780307270160_art_r1.jpg
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-eagle/who-shot-rock-and-roll-op_b_340455.html
"Who Shot Rock & Roll" at the Brooklyn Museum
Regina Weinreich
The iconic and infamous cover the walls at the Brooklyn Museum's fine exhibition (on view till January 31, 2010), "Who Shot Rock & Roll."
Yes you will see many old favorites, like John Lennon wearing a New York City sleeveless tee in Bob Gruen's contact sheet from the familiar 1974 shoot. You will see him again in Richard Avedon's 1967 formal portraits of the Beatles, their mop hair newly coiffed. And again in Allan Tannenbaum's shot of John and Yoko in bed, NYC, 1980 just two weeks before he died. The text explains that Lennon liked Tannenbaum's work: "You really capture Yoko's beauty."
And that sums up the essence of this show's raison d'etre as curated by Gail Buckland who also edited the excellent catalogue, to focus on the photographers, how the subject inspired them and the photographic arts.
What fascinates is remembering the B-52's as in George DuBose's 1978 photograph, or Ike and Tina in Memphis in 1962, as in Ernest C. Withers' photo that shows Ike's eagle eye trained on her wailing at the mike, or Amy Arbus' 1983 black & white Madonna in a boxy coat before Kabbalah and before she was buff juxtaposed with the dizzying 2001 "Madonna I" by Andreas Gursky emphasizing the pop star in the marketplace, that is, 15 combined exposures taken over a period of days from the same vantage point at the same moment in a concert with a tiny well-lit singer to the bottom left, when lights flash, confetti falls, and people hang upside down from scaffolding mechanically lowered from the stage. Epic-scale, monumental, the celestial shot overwhelms.
Buddy Holly on the bus in a 1958 Lew Allen photo, Dennis Hopper's James Brown in 1964, a wistful Elvis at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis by Lloyd Shearer in 1956, David Gahr's 1968 Janis Joplin, Jill Furmanovsky's Joy Division in 1979 and her 1977 Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, Ray Stevenson's Sex Pistols on Carnaby Street in 1976, William "Popsie" Randolph's shot of the Brooklyn Paramount where Alan Freed staged his rock and roll shows in 1955, Godlis' 1976 Patti Smith outside CBGB and Stephanie Chernikowski's 1978 "Debbie Harry CBGB NYC" take you down Memory Lane.
On opening night last Thursday, the museum featured photographer Josh Cheuse DJing, while many of the photographers--Godlis, Marcia Resnick, Bob Gruen, Allan Tannenbaum among them--milled about with a film crew in tow. Bob Gruen had a birthday party a few nights before where Bebe Buell performed songs from her new CD "Sugar" with Ronnie Spektor in attendance.
On this night, with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame celebrating across the river, the Brooklyn Museum rocked with Blondie: Debbie Harry in black wig and black satin suit with red glitter, performing her hits: "Call Me," "Heart of Glass," and "One Way or Another"; her cover of Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop" was evocative, like the rest of this show, of a rich, remarkable, and resonant music history.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/regina-weinreich/only-rock-roll_b_340999.html
Ben Eagle
If rock photography is a "silent window into the world of sound," then "Who Shot Rock & Roll, A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present," curated by Gail Buckland, is the loudest exhibit ever. Opening last night at The Brooklyn Museum, "Who Shot Rock" explores intimacy, passion and the countless other reasons we all love rock and roll in the first place.
Featuring over 175 works, the exhibit is organized into six sections: images taken behind the scenes, performance images, snapshots of musicians at the beginning of their careers, images of crowds and fans, album covers and conceptual images.
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-10-30-225_Buck_9780307270160_art_r1.jpg
Courtesy of Henry Diltz
The images of crowds and fans and the behind-the-scenes shots are the ones that resonate the most, if only for their stark dichotomy. "Madonna, I" taken by Andreas Gursky is a massive picture of Madonna playing before a crowd that seems endless. While Gursky used a computer to edit this image, the effect remains: Madonna and her concerts appear otherworldly.
Elsewhere, Amy Arbus depicts Madonna standing alone with a bowling bag on a street in New York City. Relatable yet confident, Madonna looks surprisingly human -- something that's easy to forget in Gursky's picture.
The exhibit claims to not be a history of rock and roll and its stars, but rather of the "men and women who have photographed it and given the music its visual identity."
Unfortunately, the show has trouble living up to this goal. Moving from one section to another, viewers largely find themselves star-struck. A young Jimi Hendrix looking startlingly sober as he plays backup guitar for Wilson Pickett distracts the viewer from the interesting blurb about the photographer (William "Popsie" Randolph) next to the photo. Jean-Paul Goude's sparse decoration and cut-up Ektachrome would be good studies for any young photographer, but when looking at his photographs of Grace Jones, it's hard to find artistic nuance beyond her goddess-like figure.
Not every photograph, however, is like this. Albert Watson's photographic process begs to be demystified when you view his inexplicable Mick Jagger/leopard amalgamation or his portrait of Michael Jackson that is fractured and reflected numerous times over. Both of these portraits are all the more impressive when you realize they are printed without the aid of computers.
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-10-30-075_Buck_9780307270160_art_r1.jpg
Courtesy of Albert Watson
David LaChapelle, who has two photographs in the exhibit, also draws attention to the craft with his elaborate staging and use of props. You recognize his distinctive work instantly, but in an exhibit full of intimacy and raw energy, his pieces come off as fake and cartoonish.
For a real emphasis on the supposed "handmaidens" to the rock-and-roll revolution, one has to read the book, Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present (http://www.amazon.com/Who-Shot-Rock-Roll-Photographic/dp/0307270165/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256915943&sr=8-1), published by Alfred A. Knopf. The book itself actually preceded the exhibit and is divided solely by photographer and, surprisingly, no other theme. Within its friendly confines and jarring images, a reader can't help but linger over the photos and their accompanying descriptions.
"Who Shot Rock" ended its opening night with a fitting tribute to rock and roll: a performance by Blondie. Front-woman Debbie Harry (sporting jet-black hair almost as an affront to the numerous blonde pictures of her within the exhibit) crooned the audience with all the Blondie hits -- "Call Me", "Rapture" and "Heart of Glass" -- and even a Michael Jackson tribute. And the audience, even though they were strictly told no photographs, snapped pictures throughout the entire performance.
Who could blame them? They just wanted to capture their own shot of rock.
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-10-30-056_Buck_9780307270160_art_r1.jpg
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-eagle/who-shot-rock-and-roll-op_b_340455.html
"Who Shot Rock & Roll" at the Brooklyn Museum
Regina Weinreich
The iconic and infamous cover the walls at the Brooklyn Museum's fine exhibition (on view till January 31, 2010), "Who Shot Rock & Roll."
Yes you will see many old favorites, like John Lennon wearing a New York City sleeveless tee in Bob Gruen's contact sheet from the familiar 1974 shoot. You will see him again in Richard Avedon's 1967 formal portraits of the Beatles, their mop hair newly coiffed. And again in Allan Tannenbaum's shot of John and Yoko in bed, NYC, 1980 just two weeks before he died. The text explains that Lennon liked Tannenbaum's work: "You really capture Yoko's beauty."
And that sums up the essence of this show's raison d'etre as curated by Gail Buckland who also edited the excellent catalogue, to focus on the photographers, how the subject inspired them and the photographic arts.
What fascinates is remembering the B-52's as in George DuBose's 1978 photograph, or Ike and Tina in Memphis in 1962, as in Ernest C. Withers' photo that shows Ike's eagle eye trained on her wailing at the mike, or Amy Arbus' 1983 black & white Madonna in a boxy coat before Kabbalah and before she was buff juxtaposed with the dizzying 2001 "Madonna I" by Andreas Gursky emphasizing the pop star in the marketplace, that is, 15 combined exposures taken over a period of days from the same vantage point at the same moment in a concert with a tiny well-lit singer to the bottom left, when lights flash, confetti falls, and people hang upside down from scaffolding mechanically lowered from the stage. Epic-scale, monumental, the celestial shot overwhelms.
Buddy Holly on the bus in a 1958 Lew Allen photo, Dennis Hopper's James Brown in 1964, a wistful Elvis at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis by Lloyd Shearer in 1956, David Gahr's 1968 Janis Joplin, Jill Furmanovsky's Joy Division in 1979 and her 1977 Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, Ray Stevenson's Sex Pistols on Carnaby Street in 1976, William "Popsie" Randolph's shot of the Brooklyn Paramount where Alan Freed staged his rock and roll shows in 1955, Godlis' 1976 Patti Smith outside CBGB and Stephanie Chernikowski's 1978 "Debbie Harry CBGB NYC" take you down Memory Lane.
On opening night last Thursday, the museum featured photographer Josh Cheuse DJing, while many of the photographers--Godlis, Marcia Resnick, Bob Gruen, Allan Tannenbaum among them--milled about with a film crew in tow. Bob Gruen had a birthday party a few nights before where Bebe Buell performed songs from her new CD "Sugar" with Ronnie Spektor in attendance.
On this night, with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame celebrating across the river, the Brooklyn Museum rocked with Blondie: Debbie Harry in black wig and black satin suit with red glitter, performing her hits: "Call Me," "Heart of Glass," and "One Way or Another"; her cover of Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop" was evocative, like the rest of this show, of a rich, remarkable, and resonant music history.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/regina-weinreich/only-rock-roll_b_340999.html