Who Shot Rock & Roll Gallery, Q&A With Curator Gail Buckland

Who Shot Rock & Roll is the first major museum exhibit to spotlight the creative and collaborative role that photographers played in the history of rock music. Created by the Brooklyn Museum with guest curator and author Gail Buckland, the exhibit opens on June 23 and runs through October 12 in Los Angeles at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Century City.

The show, which has been on the road for five years, features 166 prints from iconic photographers such as Diane Arbus, Danny Clinch, Anton Corbijn, Dennis Hopper, Richard Kern, David LaChapelle, Annie Leibovitz, Jim Marshall, Linda McCartney, Storm Thorgerson and many more.

The Los Angeles showing of this exhibit will feature an original documentary film produced by Arclight Productions exclusively for the Annenberg Space for Photography. The short film features new photographs, interviews and behind the scenes footage with exhibit photographers Ed Colver, Henry Diltz, Jill Furmanovsky, Lynn Goldsmith, Bob Gruen, Norman Seeff, Mark Seliger and Guy Webster. The film will also include appearances by recording artists including Alice Cooper, Noel Gallagher, Debbie Harry and Henry Rollins.

Spinner had the pleasure of speaking with Ms. Buckland, a renowned author and photography curator, about the show she put together.

With a subject that spans so many photographers, where do you begin?

There was more schlock than in any subject I've ever seen, so it was harder to find the gems. That said, my attitude was that every image in the exhibit and in my book would be a great image. I'm a photo historian, so the challenge was something I truly live for.

Was there a general approach you used?

Henry Diltz asked me who I wanted to see in his archive -- Joni Mitchell, the Eagles -- and so on. I told him, "I want to see, you as a photographer. He told me he'd never been asked that before. I told him, "The history of rock 'n' roll has been done, but what has not been done was a real investigation of the men and women that gave rock its image -- the photographers. Rock is a revolution, but it's a two-part revolution: sound and image. Kids respond to music, but also the look of it all.

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And you start with the mid 1950s, right?

Right. It covers 1955 to the present so it really is also a story many of the photographer who dropped out of the business. They don't take pictures anymore. Many of them stopped when the relationships they had with the musicians could not be maintained. All of a sudden, there were stylists and hair people and makeup people and PR people and it stopped being fun -- and stopped being real. Rock 'n' roll is supposed to have some kind of integrity and soul. It's not just suppose to be packaged, which it has started becoming.

That's an excellent point.

Michael Putland, who traveled with the Rolling Stones early in the 1970s, told me there were three or four things he was told not to shoot but everything else was OK. There was trust between the photographers and artists. There were relationships that were even more important than money. They were sacred. And many of these images reflect that.
I
joke that this is the anti-paparazzi show [laughs]. These images were all taken with mutual respect and shared relationships. Each picture communicates something: Tenderness, pain, fun, some sort of truth.

More Images From Who Shot Rock & Roll
And it seems like an exhibit that can be built upon.

Absolutely. This show is not the end. Despite the fact that some of my colleagues turn their nose up at rock 'n' roll, I have great faith in what this show represents. See, I look at it like this: Is an Ansel Adams mountain any loftier than Tina Turner on stage? No. Since 2009, the show has been to many distinguished museums and museum directors have thanked me because it's gotten people to go into a museum that had never been through the door. I believe that's because these images move us, because they aren't packaged. They're real moments that capture real emotions and insights. My overarching goal was to find great photographs -- not great rock 'n' roll photographs, per se -- but photographs that are simply great on their own, as pictures, as pieces of art.

Watch the Who Shot Rock & Roll Teaser Trailer


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