This afternoon, I checked out the rock photography exhibit called
"Who Shot Rock n' Roll?", which is a traveling exhibit curated by the Brooklyn Museum. There are some great moments captured in pictures, but as it turns out, this show is a little more complicated than the title would initially have you believe. For while there are a lot of pix of rockers sweating it out onstage (and off stage), this is also a show about fashion, technology, and the packaging and marketing of nostalgia.
A quote by
Chrissie Hynde (of The Pretenders), emblazoned on the wall in the center of museum servers as a guide:
"Presentation is half of it in rock n' roll. It's not just the music. There's music, and there's attitude, and there's image. It almost represents a way of looking at life"
This is a great quote, but the only problem is that it's not made by a photographer; it's made by a musician. A photographer needs to be quoted saying this! I kept wondering, how would a photographer describe this way of looking at life? How does this "way of life" affect how he or she snaps photos? By adding quotes from the photographers in this show, not only would the images of rock's photographers be honored, but their ideas as artists as well. (There was actually an audio tour to accompany this exhibit, which I didn't listen to. Maybe I should have!)
The best photos here, in my opinion, are about the audiences. There are a handful of pix on the bottom floor are where the stars are the audiences; the rockstar is either absent, or simply becomes a prop. Some of my faves are a bunch of girls all googly-eyed hanging outside the hotel room door of
New Kids on the Block, and another photo of
Bruce Springsteen hanging out in a doorway of some shop in New Jersey, with about seven very happy girls clustered around him, jammed in the doorway. The picture does not look posed, it looks very candid. Stuff like that is just great! Hardcore punk photographer, Ed Colver, has several pieces in this exhibit. The best one is a giant print of a moshpit: a torrential sea of humanity. Amazing!
Practically all of the photos are framed in very non-descript plain blonde wooden frames, with the exception of one or two, which were probably borrowed from someone's private collection.
Although there are mostly framed photographs in this show, there are many forms of media: in addition to photos, there are slides (projected on a wall in a slide carousel), video concert footage, MTV rock videos, a little bit of collage art, some famous album cover photos (e.g.
The Clash, two
Bob Dylan albums, The
Ramones...), a wall of actual vinyl LPs arranged chronologically (hah! They were actually all out of order!), as well as several LP covers, CD's, some cassettes, and an 8-track tape.
One thing that immediately struck me is that there as very little music in this exhibit. The only tunes came from the Elvis video at the entrance, and videos by Grace Jones and The Vines, both on the bottom floor. But then again, it was just as well: music would only distract from the photos themselves. And then again still, adding music didn't seem necessary, for I realized that rock n' roll is a lot about image, fashion, and attitude; style over substance? Style is HUGE.
In the foyer, right as you walk in (after reading the aforementioned statement), you're confronted with a massive 10 foot high color portrait of
David Lee Roth (from
Van Halen), screaming crowd noise from an
Elvis Presley exhibit adjacent to it, and a photo of the Brooklyn Paramount theater advertising the
Alan Freed radio show on it's billboard sign. Those are the three images that served as the introduction to the exhibit.
Surveying the exhibit from the top floor, you notice that the walls of the museum are painted various shades of grey, evoking a smokey appearance. Throughout the museum are some freestanding walls, painted a rich red color. These walls serve as dividers (creating themed "rooms", and also add some color to this predominately black and white show.
The first images you see as you walk through the top floor are early pictures of the
Rolling Stones, and (on the flipside) photos from
Bob Dylan's
"Freewheelin" and
"Blonde on Blonde" albums. They are mounted on a big room divider which has the phrase "In the Beginning..." written on it. So...there IS an historical aspect to this show; in the beginning was the
Rolling Stones! This is an odd beginning to confront, because the
Rolling Stones, the
Beatles,
Led Zepplin, the
Yardbirds, and others were all including old rhythm & blues covers on their first albums, an obvious acknowledgement of their debt to an even earlier music, country and blues. I just feel that, out of respect to rock's real history, that a few pix of bluesmen would have been nice, and perhaps a picture of Dylan's mentor, Woodie Guthrie. (KISS, however, is completely absent--and like them or not, they were a big part of rock fashion!)
On that same top floor are pictures of the
Mamas and Pappas, The
Ramones,
The Clash (there's a lot of The Clash in this show) and a great famous pic by Alfred Wertheimer of Elvis licking a girls tongue while holding her close. There are also pictures of
Pink Floyd,
Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Velvet Underground, The Yardbirds, The Doors, Madonna...and in a corner, a photo of
Ike and Tina Turner (playing at Club Paradise in 1962).
Walking down into the museum, you pass another wall divider, with the title "Behind the Scenes". Here you see pix of people partying, kissing, and posing for the camera. We see
The Beatles exiting a plane,
Keith Richards with his newborn, and
Joe Strummer enjoying himself in Thailand.
There's a great pure rock n' roll shot of
Joe Strummer in a leather jacket, kissing a blonde woman as he's got her back arched over the tailfin of an old car. Hot stuff! There's also a picture of
Buddy Holly, sitting on (what looks like) a Greyhound bus, looking like a total rose-cheeked dweeb; there's
The Supremes, with their big hair doos, exiting a plane. This photo of
Salt n Pepa is also in the show...
There's
Debbie Harry showing off her diamond wedding ring at CBGB's in 1978; There's
Patti Smith outside CBGB's in 1976 (with a "Bleeker Street" street sign in the background).
There's a photo of
Joe Strummer dressed as a beat writer, nattily dressed in white shirt, slacks, and suspenders, sitting at a writing desk, with an old typewriter: three feet of paper roll out of the back, ala Jack Kerouac writing
"On The Road" (the cadence of my writing here is starting to remind me of "Howl"...)
Moving right along, we see photos of
Wu Tang Clan (1996),
M.I.A (2007), and a pair of video screens showing
Bjork singing her song
"Big Time Sensuality" (ho hum! Empty pixie rock!)
Mounted on another wall divider is a large picture of
Paul McCartney looking at
Linda McCartney (that is, us) in the rear view mirror, while driving down a London street. The photos is titled,
"My Love, London"(1978). Also on this level are pix of several rock women in bed:
Bjork (again, several times in this exhibit!),
Amy Winehouse,
John Lennon & Yoko Ono, and
Patti Smith.
As I walked through this exhibit, I wondered, "Is a rock photographer someone who simply shoots pictures of rockstars? Or is there something else at work here?"
One of the most memorable set of pix in this show is on this level:
Kurt Cobain (of
Nirvana) crying after smashing his guitar, and an SX-70 photo of
Courtney Love (of
Hole), which she signed "Fuck You" (not pictured). Both are displayed side-by-side on their own red wall divider, as if to say "Courtney and Kurt forever" What's interesting about the Courtney Love picture is that it was made with the
Polaroid SX-70. The SX-70 was a very unique camera, the first to create an "instant" photo, before the days of digital photography. But any discussion of photo technology is, for the most part, absent from this show. But it's so important! Especially if you're honoring
photographers!
One of the curiosities in this exhibit of rock photography is the inclusion of actual recorded artifacts: vinyl records, CD's, cassette tapes, 8 track tapes, paper record sleeves and cardboard album covers (for those LPs). These are all hung on a wall, and organized by decade, starting with the 1950's, and continuting right through the current day, all divided with place markers for each decade (1950's, 1960's, etc...)
Here are some details about the records mounted on the walls... From the 1950's: The Hilltoppers, "Til Then" (Dot Records); The King Cole Trio, "Route 66" (Capitol Records); and paper record sleeves from Elvis Presley, "Heartbreak Hotel" (4 song EP), and Little Richard, "Keep A Knockin'" b/w "Can't Believe Ya Wanna Leave". From the 1960's: (it starts getting a little out of order here, as you'll see...): Klymaxx, "Meeting in the Ladies Room (Constellation Records); The Mood Blues, "Seventh Sojourn" LP (Threshold Records), and Kool and the Gang, "Ladies Night" LP (De-Lite Records)...I'll stop here, because I notice that a lot of albums from the '70's (I checked the dates) are hanging in categories for all of the decades (for about half of the albums)...maybe their used mainly for decoration?
Other albums from the '70's on the wall are from the Platters (a '50's group), the Lettermen (ditto), Diana Ross & the Supremes, and Joan Baez. By far, the largest number of albums in this part of the exhibit come from the '70's. Others from that decade are: Allman Bros, Cher, Rod Stewart, Blondie, David Bowie, KISS (their "Dynasty" album; WTF??), Queen, Peter Frampton, Lou Reed, and Marvin Gaye. Also from the '70's: four cassette tape cases (Foreigner, Rick James, The Who, and Neil Young), and one 8-track tape (David Bowie's "The Stage"---was that a Bowie album? I can't find it listed anywhere! Better research that one..it may actually be a collector's item!).
From the '80's, there are LPs from Cream, Joe Cocker, Jethro Tull, and Iron Butterfly (I'm not even checking if these bands are categorized correctly by decade anymore...), and CD cases by Prince, Feargal Sharkey, Chris Isaak, Simple Minds, LL Cool J, Tina Turner. For the 2000's, we've got vinyl LPs by The Stranglers, Berlin, Pat Benatar, Pacific Gas & Electric, Ten Years After, Seals & Croft, The Who's "Tommy", and "The Worst of the Jefferson Airplane".
This wall full of misfiled records has got to be regarded as an installation that recognizes the fact the the primary vehicle for showing off rock photography is the record album cover. The fact that they are sometimes out of order is no big deal. This is an exhibit, as was noted earlier, that is more about rock photography than it is about rock history. The out-of-order album covers only reinforces that claim!
Right as you walk into the exhibit, there is a placard which attempts to clarify the aims of the show: "The exhibit is not a history of rock n' roll, but an appreciation of the men and women who have photographed the music and given it its visual identity", and "there is no one soundtrack to rock, and there is no one photographic vision". That is correct, but it's also about memory, and curating, and collecting, and technology, and rock journalism, and trends, and style, and fashion. And then there are issues particular to photography: there's the type of film, the type of camera, how the photographer composes the shot, the photographer's approach to capturing an image (is there a method?).
For me, although I really enjoyed looking at these photos, and these videos, and these artifacts, I still don't know the answer to the question "Who Shot Rock n' Roll?" I know the images, but I really wish I knew more about the photographers and what they did to get their images. That would take the focus off of the rockers themselves, and instead, put it on the image makers and their methods, which is where it belongs (for a show that honors photographers)! Still, this exhibit is a lot of fun, and there are many great moments here captured on film (and video). Check it out!
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| my photogrphic contribution: "Encore!!" |
