My Visual Diary: Week 2, Day 1

Lily Newman
Sep 21, 2015
4 min read

This afternoon, we had a lecture on the History of Music Photography which consisted of a powerpoint of different music photographers over the decades. Here are a list of the music photographers and some information about the work that they did.

1. Herman Leonard

- an American photographer who was born in 1923 and died in 2010

- he started his photography career in 1947

- his images of rising smoke and jazz bars were very popular

- he showed that you can take a portrait of someone without them being there if there is something unique about them (eg. a hat or prop)

This is one of Herman's portrait images that don't actually have a person posing in them

Thia is another of Herman's images that show his very popular images of the rising smoke

2. Jim Marshall

- an American photographer that was born in 1936 and died in 2010

- he was an original rock photographer

- he started taking pictures of the San Francisco music scene whilst at school

- he published a book called 'Trust'

- he focused on taking images from a lower angle which made the people look very empowering

- shot over 500 album covers

- he used a wide angle lens to make the photo look empowering

This is one of Jim's iconic pictures of the Allman Brothers where you can see he's used a wide angle lens and shot from a lower angle

This is another iconic image of Jim Marshall's of The Beatles stepping off a plane. This is ironic as Paul McCartney is holding a film camera just like Marshall would have had to take the picture of The Beatles

3. Annie Leibivitz

- an American photographer born in 1949

- celebrity photography has always been her subject

- she shot the front cover for the Rolling Stone magazine which made her career

- one her most iconic images was of John Lennon and his wife Yoko which was taken just a few hours before he was killed

- she travelled across America for a couple of years photographing musicians

This is the Rolling Stone magazine that made Annie's career

This is the John Lennon photo that was taken just hours before he was killled. This was the last picture of them together and the last of John Lennon alive

4. Anton Corbijn

- a Dutch photographer born in 1955

- by 1976 he was the chief photographer of the main Dutch music magazine OOR

- in 1979 he moved to London photographing regularly for NME magazine

- Anton has a film called 'Control'

- also a film photographer

This is an image of the band Joy Division, Anton has taken this picture with great thought as he has got the main singer looking back with an intense gaze right through the camera lens

This is another of Anton's band photos. This particular image is of U2 which also shows the use of the intense gaze but the main singer isn't the one with the intense gaze it's the musicians in the band that have the intense gaze

5. Laura Levine

- iconic music photographer who shoots portraits which have appeared in countless magazines, album covers and books

- her work is in the permanent collection of the rock and roll hall of fame mueseum

This is an image of Madonna that Laura took when Madonna wasn't very well known my people. Thanks to Laura, Madonna is now known by billions of people.

This is a picture of Boy George when he was famous in the UK but unknown in the US, once he was photographed by Laura he suddenly became more well known. To me it seems that Laura's aim was to make people who wanted to be successful become successful

6. David La Chapelle

- he began his career in America in the 1980's

- a master of the use of colour his work caught the eye of Andy Warhol

- juxtaposition

- moved into the music video and documentry industry

- he has directed music videos for: Elton John, Robbie Williams, Florence and the Machine and lots more...

This is one of Chaplle's images of David Beckham when he was younger, you can see the amount of colour he has used but the colour hasn't been edited in it's been painted as a set behind David and only small amounts of editing have been added to the image

This is a picture of Katy Perry which has been done in the same way as David Beckham with a painted set behind her

7. Tom Oldham

- he studied at Plymouth College of Art in the mid 90's

- he moved to Brighton and began his career shooting live bands

- he is Richard Branson's official brand photographer for Virgin

- a music portrait photographer

- works in colour annd greyscale but mainly colour

- uses lighting

- shows defined features on faces

- uses low angles to shoot pictures for effect

- uses wide angle camera lens

- doesn't always take pictures witth people in them

This is Tinie Tempah. You can see that Tom has used lighting on this image because you can see the light reflecting off of Tinie's glasses and down the centre of his face

This is Alex Turner from the Artic Monkeys. This picture is insane! The shine on his leather jacket really shows and makes the picture look amazing this is one of my favourite images that has been done by Tom

8. David Redfern

- an English jazz photographer born 1936 and died in 2014

- he had over 10,000 pictures in his collection including photos of The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix

- he began photographing TV shows like Ready, Steady, Cook where he met the people who have made his most renowned photos

- before he died he was still travelling around the world photographing music bands