Tag Archive for "Masters of Music Photography"
Although I wouldn’t strictly describe Anton Corbijn as a music photographer, even though it was where he started, his photography has always been a huge inspiration and has a large part to play in me wanting to do music photography.
U2 were the first band I really got into and saw in concert, Cardiff Arms Park in 1987 when they were on The Joshua Tree tour. I took a small camera (a Kodak Disc Camera from memory) and have some really bad photos of them and the support bands (The Pretenders and The Alarm) from miles away from the stage, where they are just little dots on the stage, and most of the photo is the back of the heads of the people in front of me…
The cover for ‘The Unforgettable Fire’ always mesmerised me as the photography was just so beautiful (I realised later when I started getting into photography properly that it was done with black and white infrared film), even though half of it is blurry and out of focus. And the same with the ‘Joshua Tree’ album artwork photos; they were (and are) amazing.
At that first gig, by the time that I went to get a t-shirt they had sold out, so I ended up getting a programme, which was full of other photos that were taken when they were out in the desert doing the photos that ended up on the album artwork. So my first bit of proper band memorabilia was a book of photos.
Although I still have that program, I treated myself to a more up-to-date and flashy version a couple of years ago and bought his book ‘U2 and I’ as a birthday present to myself.
I’ve always liked the simplicity of his photos; there’s nothing complicated or flash about his images, there’s no use of elaborate props for the most part. There’s also a seriousness about his images and if photography is about stealing people’s souls I don’t think anyone does it better than Anton Corbijn. I’ve also always liked his use of individual portraits of band members and also his use of alternate printing processes, especially his use of lith printing, both of which I’ve looked to take into my own photos.
On their last tour I was offered the photo op to photograph U2 when they played in Brisbane. However, this opportunity was emailed me and I only had a 20 minute window to get back to them to say if I was available to do it. I was at work but away from my computer and by the time I got back I was too late; the chance had been and gone. It was a really devastating experience. I’d waited 20 years for this - the chance to photograph the first band I really got into, the first band I saw in concert, and whose photos had been hugely influential on my photography. What was especially depressing about the whole thing was that the publication who offered it to me had my mobile number and had used it previously to contact me about things like photographing The Presets. Yet they offered me the opportunity to photograph just about the world’s biggest band, took the chance that I would be sat in front of a computer and able to quickly respond, and so emailed me.
Afterwards I emailed the promoter and pretty much begged for the chance, even saying that I was going down to Sydney to see them (on the Monday night, their third Sydney date) so if there were any available photographer places I could photo them in Brisbane or Sydney, but no dice. Guess there’s always next time…
Although I have some albums with Gered Mankowitz covers, including Kate Bush’s ‘Lionheart’ and he is probably best know for his cover for the Rolling Stones album ‘Between the Buttons’, his live work was something that I was largely introduced to when he had an exhibition of his Rolling Stones photos at the Proud Gallery in Camden in 2002, which coincided with the launch of his Rolling Stones 65 – 67 book. Much of the book is taken with his nine-week, 48 city tour of the USA in 1965.
Whilst musically I’ll always take The Beatles over the Stones, photographically I’ve always found The Stones to have been generally better photographed than The Beatles. There are several things I really like about Mankowitz’s Stones photos during this period.
As a photographer you can’t help but be envious at the size of the tour and also the access that he was allowed, something you’d almost never get in this day with a band of the Stones’s fame, even back in 1965 when they were just beginning to break in the US. Even if you did get a tour photographer job these days it’s unlikely to be as long as 48 dates, and its not going to be without a whole load of restrictions, nothing like the real ‘Access All Areas’ freedom that music photographers in the 1960s and 1970s seem to have got.
It could be argued that technically the photos are nothing to write home about – even shooting mainly at ISO 3200 there are a lot of focus images due to slow shutter speeds in the dark venues – but I think this only adds to the charm of the photos and helps place them at a time in history. I have previously written in my blog and argued in photography forums on the internet, I have no issues with blurriness or images that aren’t pin sharp. If you’re photographing something like car racing, the advice is usually to pan the camera to add movement, as photos of cars racing at high speed but frozen at high shutter speeds in photos make for a dull set of photos. So I see no difference when capturing the energy and movement of a band on stage or a highly excited crowd; blur from movement adds so much more to the overall effect.
Finally, there’s such a sense of history looking at the photos; the fresh faced Stones, the fashion of the band and the audience and, most importantly, the sense of being in the right time at the right place to capture the madness as the Stones suddenly hit the big time in the US. It’s quite a unique situation and it’s what every music photographer dreams about.
There’s a video podcast of Gered talking about his work at The Morrison Hotel Gallery here.
Although I started off this theme of blog postings with Steve Gullick, that was largely as a result of his new exhibition in London and the associated interviews and write-ups that he was getting. Although he is one of my favourite music photographers, the true number one spot should go to a photographer who I only became aware of in the last few years, Herman Leonard.
As with myself, most music photographers seem to be completely unaware of Herman Leonard, even though they might have seen his work in print. I think that this is largely due to having moved in slightly different circles by photographing jazz musicians, meaning that he flies under the radar of most ‘rock’ music photographers. In addition, I think the fact that he started photographing in the 1940s means his work largely pre-dates the music photography of the 1960s of classic rock bands that photographers associate with as the starting point of music photography.
He used a large-format camera with sheet film, a world away from the digital technology that most photographers now use, and by using a large-format camera, the level of detail in his photos is amazing.
He did have one advantage over most modern day photographers in that a lot of his photographs were taken at rehearsals/sound checks, allowing him to bring and set up his own lights and not rely on the venues own lights, or more likely the lack of light.
But that should in no way take away from his work, which is truly exquisite and completely awe inspiring.
What I’ve tried to take from him is his portrait style of photographing and also the beauty of monochrome; I still convert probably the vast majority of photos to black and white or convert and tone them even when they look good in colour, and even photos taken in daylight. There’s just something about black and white that can take a good colour photos and amplify the results substantially by converting it to a monochrome image.
By chance I was re-checking out his website late in 2006 and saw that he was doing at book signing of his new book ‘Jazz, Giants and Journeys: The Photography of Herman Leonard’ at Book Soup in LA and that you could order a copy over the internet. So have a nice signed copy on my shelf, as seen in the photo at the top of the page.
However, I also picked up a copy of one of his previous books, ‘Eye of Jazz’, on eBay cheaply and if you can get hold of it, I really recommend you do so, as it’s fantastic and soley devoted to his music photography, whereas ‘Jazz, Giants and Journeys’ is a mix of his music, travel and portrait photography.
There’s a really good 30 minute interview Herman did at San Diego’s KPBS radio on their website, here.
Hope I’m sounding that good and being that passionate about photography when I’m 84…
