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Henry DiltzTina Turner, Universal Amphitheater, Los Angeles, 1985 (printed 2009)Credit: Henry Diltz/Morrison Hotel Gallery © Henry Diltz
Henry Diltz (American, born 1938 )
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Alfred Wertheimer (American, born Germany 1929)Elvis Whispers Softly, 1956Credit: photograph © Alfred Wertheimer, The Wertheimer Collection
Alfred Wertheimer (American, born Germany 1929)
Alfred Wertheimer spent only ten days with Elvis Presley, but in that short time he made some of the most memorable, tender, and intimate pictures of “The Kid” before he became “The King.” Elvis was twenty-one; Wertheimer was twenty-six. Nineteen fifty-six was Wertheimer’s first year as a professional photographer. It was Elvis’s first year as a star; he didn’t even have a gold record. Wertheimer was an unknown freelance photographer who was given total access to Elvis. Shortly thereafter, no photojournalist would be able to show Elvis so completely and in such private and personal moments. Wertheimer never posed Elvis. The photographer says he wanted to be a “fly on the wall” but always made certain to get at least eight to ten good pictures to tell the story.
No one knows the identity of the girl in this photograph, whom Elvis had met that day. Wertheimer remembers her saying, “I’ll bet you can’t kiss me, Elvis,” to which he replied, “I’ll bet you I can.” Five minutes later, Wertheimer says, Elvis “combed his hair one more time, grabbed his guitar, and jumped on stage in front of three thousand screaming fans.” -
Claude GassianElvis Costello, Paris, 1989Credit: Courtesy of Claude Gassian
Claude Gassian (French, born 1949)
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Danny ClinchTupac Shakur, August 1993Credit: Courtesy of Danny Clinch
Danny Clinch (American, born 1964)
“In America, with black skin, I’m just Tupac the cop-killer dude,” asserted Tupac Shakur in a 1993 Rolling Stone interview. Here, in Danny Clinch’s portrait taken in the studio with a 4 x 5–inch Polaroid camera, he proudly exposes that skin.Tupac had just released his second album, Strickly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z., but was not yet a superstar. He arrived at Clinch’s studio with just one assistant and a few changes of clothes. When Clinch saw him remove his shirt, he knew Tupac’s tattooed body was better than any outfit. The photograph was shot with the cover of Rolling Stone in mind, but it was not used as such until the musician’s death three years later.
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Jerry Schatzberg (American, born 1927)Frank Zappa, "Himself", 1967 (printed 2009)Credit: Courtesy of Jerry Schatzberg
Jerry Schatzberg (American, born 1927)
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Richard KernMarilyn Manson "Lunchbox Shoot," 1995 (printed 2008)Credit: Collection of the artist © Richard Kern
Richard Kern (American, born 1954)
Together Richard Kern and Marilyn Manson made a picture that was intentionally controversial. Manson wanted to re-create the famous calendar photograph of a nude Marilyn Monroe against a red background, shot by Tom Kelley. He also liked a scene in one of Kern’s films in which the transgressive pin-up girl Lung Leg (known for appearing on the cover of the Sonic Youth album EVOL) smears lipstick all over herself. Manson told Kern he wanted something that could be sold to a “sex magazine.” Another photograph from the session was used on Manson’s single “Lunchbox.”
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Max VadukulAmy Winehouse, Miami, May 18, 2007 (printed 2009)Credit: © Max Vadukul
Max Vadukul (British, born Kenya 1961)
Cecil Beaton, celebrated portrait and fashion photographer from the 1920s through the 1970s, remembered the revolutionary feeling in photography when female models were allowed to spread their feet apart—even a little. Prior etiquette demanded that the two feet touch. Times change. Here, Max Vadukul takes the viewer right into bed with Amy Winehouse on her wedding day. That she is clothed takes nothing away from the seduction. Rolling Stone ran the picture across two pages in its June 14, 2007, issue under the heading “The Diva and Her Demons.” The photograph dramatizes the challenge of all stars of the twenty-first century: what do you reveal and what do you protect as you approach stardom? -
Albert WatsonL.L. Cool J, 1992 (printed 2009)Credit: Private Collection, Photo by Albert Watson
Albert Watson (British, born 1942)
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Shawn MortensonCourtney Love, San Fernando Valley, California, December 1993Credit: Collection of Shawn Mortenson Archive
Shawn Mortenson (American, 1965-2009)
Courtney Love captioned her own portrait made by Shawn Mortensen, who died in 2009. She is shown taking a break from a promotional shoot for her band Hole’s album Live through This, released April 12, 1994, seven days after the suicide of her husband, Kurt Cobain. -
Allan TannenbamJohn and Yoko in Bed, New York, November 21, 1980Credit: Courtesy of Allan Tannenbaum, from "John and Yoko: A New York Love Story" © Allan Tannenbaum
Allan Tannenbaum (American, born 1945)
“You know what I like about your pictures?” John Lennon said to Allan Tannenbaum, who was working as a photographer for New York’s SoHo Weekly News in November 1980. “You really
capture Yoko’s beauty.”John and Yoko in Bed was taken in the studio during the filming of the video for “(Just Like) Starting Over” from the Double Fantasy album. Two weeks later, Lennon would be dead.
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Hannes SchmidDavid Lee Roth, Van Halen, 1980 (printed 2009)Credit: Collection of Hannes Schmid, Zurich
Hannes Schid (Swiss, born 1946)
Hannes Schmid was one of the most prolific rock photographers in Europe from 1977 to 1982, and his music-related archive numbers more than seventy thousand images. Schmid often made portraits of rock stars either before or just after they went onstage. These were sometimes inserted in rock-and-roll magazines in fragments as piecemeal posters called star cuts—one would have to buy six or more consecutive issues of the publication in order to piece together the pages to form a life-size poster of the star. This mammoth picture of David Lee Roth, a result of rephotographing the pieced-together picture, is the actual size of a star cut and shows the halftone dots from the magazine pages. -
Nitin VadukulRadiohead, St. Louis, 1993, 1933 (printed 2008)Credit: Courtesy of Nitin Vadukul
Nitin Vadukul (British, born Kenya 165)
Nitin Vadukul’s group portrait of Radiohead (from left: Jonny Greenwood, Phil Selway, Thom Yorke, Ed O’Brien, and Colin Greenwood) is a perfect evocation of the dissonant, cerebral, complex music coming from these five individuals. Vadukul double exposed one 35mm negative to produce a photograph both real and unreal. This image is inherently photographic in its ability to challenge perception and raise questions about illusion and actuality. The picture is fluid, with disorienting shifts in scale, but the disproportionate size of Yorke’s ear anchors the image while seeming to refer to the experience of hearing music. -
Andy EarlBow Wow WowCredit: Photo by Andy Earl
Andy Earl (British, born circa 1955)
In 1979, the artist Andy Earl, then twenty-four years old, represented Britain at the Venice Biennale (an international contemporary art exhibition). The year before, the impresario Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, had seen Earl’s blurred and haunting color photographs at the Photographers’ Gallery in London. When McLaren wanted something striking and shocking for the cover of a new album by Bow Wow Wow, a group he represented, he remembered Earl’s photography. Together they settled on a re-envisioning of the nineteenth-century French artist Edouard Manet’s famous painting Le déjeuner sur l’herbe [The Luncheon on the Grass] of 1863. The male musicians, beautifully costumed by the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, were delicately arranged, with the naked teenaged lead singer, Annabella Lwin, carefully positioned. To McLaren’s delight, the picture immediately became controversial. The underage rock star did not have her mother’s permission to pose naked.
Edouard Manet (French, 1832–1883). Le déjeuner sur l’herbe [The Luncheon on the Grass], 1863. Oil on canvas. Paris, Musée d’Orsay. Etienne Moreau Nélaton donation, 1906 EMI Studio -
Albert WatsonMichael Jackson, New York City, 1999 (printed 2000)Credit: Private collection, Photo by Albert Watson
Albert Watson (British, born 1942)
This photograph was made during a shoot for the artwork for Michael Jackson’s Invincible album, but this print was not the one used. Watson writes: “We chose the multiple mirrors to capture Michael’s energy and the variety of his dance moves. As soon as I saw the contact sheet, I knew that the way to present this print was with the multiples atop one another, because it captures his energy even more. The full print is really just a representation of the original contact sheet. There are only eight mirrors, but they create hundreds of images of Michael Jackson, or at least parts of him, when assembled like this.” -
Albert WatsonJagger/Leopard, 1992Credit: Private Collection, Photo by Albert Watson
Albert Watson (British, born 1942)
Albert Watson tells how Mick Jagger and the leopard became one: “The original idea for the shooting was to have Jagger driving a Corvette, with the leopard in the passenger seat . . . [but] putting the leopard in the car with him ended up being so dangerous that we had to build a partition. So, while we were waiting, I thought, ‘Let me try a quick double exposure with the leopard.’ I shot the leopard first and drew its eyes and nose onthe viewfinder of the camera. Then I rewound the film and photographed Jagger, fitting his eyes and nose over the eyes and nose of the leopard on the viewfinder so they matched. I didn’t think it would work, and I almost threw out the film. But of the twelve shots, four of them matched, and this was the best of the four that worked.”
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David CorioGrace Jones Perforning at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, October 10, 1981 (printed 2008)Credit: © David Corio
David Corio (British, born 1960)
It may look like a studio shot, but it’s not. David Corio was twenty-one when he took this photograph, but he had been shooting live events since his teens and had toured with U2 in Ireland the previous year. Corio’s instructors at Gloucester College of Art and Design told him that music photography was not “an artistic subject.” They were wrong. -
William "PoPsie" RandolphJimi Hendrix and Wilson Pickett, Prelude Club, Atlantic Records release party, Harlem, New York, May, 5, 1966Credit: Courtesy of Michael Randolph, Excutor to the Estate of the William "PoPsie" Randolph
William "PoPsie" Randolph (American,1920-1978)
On May 5, 1966, William “PoPsie” Randolph was asked to photograph a record release party at the Prelude Club in Harlem for Percy Sledge, a new musician for Atlantic Records. Performing were Wilson Pickett and a talented young guitarist playing backup named Jimi Hendrix. A year later, Hendrix would emerge as one of the most powerful rock-and-roll performers of all time.
For those familiar with Hendrix’s later career, it is shocking to see him playing in a tuxedo. But many of Randolph’s pictures are unique; he was often the only photographer present at momentous occasions in music history. -
Barrie WentzellAretha Franklin, Possibly at Hammersmith Odeon, London, August 1970Credit: Barrie Wentzell Photography
Barrie Wentzell (British, born 1942)
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Ernest WithersIke and Tina Turner, Club Paradise, Memphis, 1962 (printed 2002)Credit: Courtesy of Decaneas Archive
Ernest Withers (American, 1922-2007)
Ernest Withers photographed the civil rights movement, the Negro Baseball League, many aspects of African American daily life, and almost every Black musician who passed through Memphis from the 1940s to the end of the twentieth century. His studio was on Beale Street, perfectly located for musicians to visit or for him to photograph them in the clubs where they performed. He photographed B.B. King in every decade from the 1940s to the end of the century. He caught a young Elvis Presley backstage with African American musicians and without Colonel Parker, his manager, supervising him. Isaac Hayes, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Ruth Brown, Big Mama Thornton, Ray Charles, Junior Parker, Marian Anderson, Howlin’ Wolf, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Diana Ross, Al Green, Dizzy Gillespie, Dionne Warwick, and Ma Rainey have all been immortalized through Withers’s lens. Withers didn’t just make portraits or performance pictures; he captured the wellspring of the music—the world that nurtured, challenged, and produced the musicians. -
Ebet RobertsThe Cramps, CBGB, New York City, December 10, 1993 (printed 2009)Credit: Courtesy of Ebet Roberts
Ebet Roberts (American, born mid-20th century)
Ebet Roberts was a painter first, then a regular photographer at the New York music club CBGB. She began taking photographs with a painterly eye. Here, the play of light and dark across the faces of the Cramps (Slim Chance, Lux Interior, and Poison Ivy Rorschach) is masterfully rendered. Not everyone could paint with light or balance colors with such skill in the crazy graffiti-covered black box of CBGB. -
Josh CheuseRun-DMC Live at the Ritz, New York City, 1984 (printed 2009)Credit: © Josh Cheuse
Josh Cheuse (American, born 1965)
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David CorioChrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, Nashville Rooms, London March 9, 1979 (printed 2008)Courtesy: David Corio
David Corio (British, born 1960)
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Ian DicksonThe Ramones at Eric’s Club, Liverpool, England, May 1977Credit: Courtesy of Ian Dickson/www.late20thcenturyboy.com
Ian Dickson (British, born 1945)
For this shot of the Ramones, Ian Dickson was perfectly positioned to fuse performers and audience. The year before, Sounds magazine had sent Dickson to photograph the Sex Pistols with specific instructions to show the audience as well as the performers. The editors understood, as did Dickson, that punk was visual as well as audible, and that a “gig” was the total package—musicians and audience working together toward a frenzy. -
Ian DicksonRed Hot Chili Peppers, Hamburg, Germany, 1992 -
Michael PutlandMick Jagger, Philadelphia, 1982 (printed 1990s)Credit: Collection of Michael Putland
Michael Putland (British, born 1947)
Michael Putland was the official photographer on some of the Rolling Stones’ U.S. and European tours. He had access granted no other photographer and was able to stay in the “pit” for the entire concert while the other photographers were asked to leave after the first three songs. Putland laments the lack of discrimination in the press today when it comes to celebrity portraiture. “There is no premium for quality,” he says. “I love photography, not the nonsense.” -
Charles PetersonMosh Pit at Endfest, Kitsap County, Washington, 1991Credit: Courtesy of Charles Peterson
Charles Peterson (American, born 1964)
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Laura LevineR.E.M., Walter's Bar-B-Que, Athens, Georgia, 1984Credit: Courtesy of Laura Levine
Laura Levine (American, born 1958)
