Henry Diltz Photo of Tina Turner
Since the beginning of rock music, the media and general public have been fascinated with rock stars. Their rises to fame (and often pit-falls due to self-destructive habits) have been carefully documented. As such, the Brooklyn Museum’s “Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present” is an excellent photographic narrative of the rock stars we all know and love.
The exhibition, organized by photography historian Gail Buckland, displays over 175 images from 105 photographers. The eclectic mix of work includes album cover art, candid snapshots, publicity portraits, and live performance pictures.
A New York Times Review of the exhibition calls into question “What makes a high-quality rock photograph?” (and compares these photos to fashion photography) As the article states,
…Fashion photography is more immediately visual; you don’t have to know who the model is or who designed the clothes to be interested. With rock photographs it matters who the subject is. Knowing that the bearded young man smiling genially at the camera in a 1972 photograph by Lynn Goldsmith is Bruce Springsteen greatly enhances the experience of an otherwise nondescript picture, for fans of the Boss, anyway.
One way to make rock photographs more interesting would be to analyze them as sociological or anthropological documents. Examining them according to some quasi-scientific system could bring to light meanings and metaphors that we have come to take for granted in the cult of rock. Hero worship, sexual aggression, gender role-playing, youthful rebellion and the triumph of neo-primitivism in a consumerist age of unprecedented scientific, technological and industrial progress: these are topics worth examining…
However, “Who Shot Rock and Roll” is an entertaining show that most pop-culture enthusiasts will enjoy. This seems to be a show for all ages. Baby-boomers will look at the photos of young Madonna and Elvis and be called back to their youths, while todays 20- and 30- somethings will see photos of rock stars from the 80s and 90s and laugh at the styles they all once tried to copy.
Particularly stimulating are photographs of those who died young, as the NY Times article reports,
Of course, some did not get old. Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Tupac Shakur will remain forever young, and pictures of them evoke thoughts of what might have been.
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