VIA PRESS RELEASE | Rock and Roll Stories: A Collection of Photographs by Lynn Goldsmith is a breathtaking exhibition from one of the most prolific and diverse rock photographers of her generation, opening at San Francisco Art Exchange (458 Geary Street San Francisco, CA 94102 ) on June 7 and running through June 29. The collection will be shown alongside another Goldsmith collection: the premiere of her visionary new Imagine Series. Goldsmith will be on hand at the opening reception on the evening of June 8.
Rock and Roll Stories will showcase a diverse collection of 25 of Goldsmith’s rock photos, some rarely, if ever, seen before. Her Imagine Series comprises visionary/fantasy photo creations that incorporate various musical icons. Goldsmith says, “San Francisco Art Exchange has shown my photography for almost two decades. Beginning on June 8th, along with well-known images of icons I’ve had the opportunity to work with over the past 50 years, SFAE will premiere a new series of ‘Imagine’ photographs. Images of Dolly Parton as a Ringmaster, Cher as fairytale legend Thumbelina, Michael Jackson as Aladdin, The Eurythmics—Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart—as Cinderella and her footman, to name a few. These singular images are a collection of many photographs put together to create what appears to be a true moment in time. In fact, these moments don’t exist in real time or space.”
Kabrich says, “Lynn’s creative energy never ceases to amaze me. With a decades-long career, she has photographed some of the greatest performers in history. This is a feat that is praiseworthy on its own terms. That she was able to build such a historic archive of quality in the male-dominated worlds of rock and of photography makes her a rare and highly collectible artist. Aside from the institutional respect she has earned with works in the Smithsonian Institution, she continues to invent and explore new creative avenues as her Imagine Series demonstrates. That is why we are premiering some beautiful and fascinating photographs from this adventurous portfolio alongside works from her legendary body of work.”
Goldsmith’s unique eye has been celebrated for decades. Known for taking the viewer into the studio, the tour bus, the concert hall, and the streets where the pictures were taken, her photographs as well as her reminiscences and observations are sharp-eyed, while also being warm and filled with a generous spirit. She is revered for evoking a world of complex personalities confronting the high-pressure demands of artistic integrity, stardom, love, friendship, and commercial forces—a set of challenges with which her subjects must come to terms with. These same challenges are well known to Goldsmith herself, making her an ideal and empathetic collaborator on a photo shoot. Her forthcoming limited edition book Patti Smith Before – Easter- After will be released in fall 2019 with Taschen.
About the Photographer | Lynn Goldsmith’s imagery is in numerous collections: The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, The Museum of Modern Art, The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Museum Folkwang, The Polaroid Collection, The Kodak Collection, etc. Her work over the past 50 years in the editorial world has appeared on and between the covers of Life, Newsweek, Time, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, National Geographic Traveler, Sports Illustrated, People, Elle, Interview, The New Yorker, etc. The subjects have varied from entertainment personalities to sports stars, from film directors to authors, from the extraordinary to the ordinary man on the street. Winning numerous prestigious awards from the Lucien Clergue to the World Press in Portraiture, she considers herself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to make her passion of a quest into the nature of the human spirit into her living.
Lynn considers herself a self-taught artist and entrepreneur. Others have considered her to be a pioneer in numerous areas of the arts as well as in business. She was the founder of the first photo agency which focused on celebrity portraiture, representing the work of over two hundred worldwide photographers. Established in 1976, when news photography was what photo agencies focused on, Lynn seemed to know before others that the magazine appetite would change from world events to coverage of the biggest names in movies and music.
The wide range of Lynn’s talents, skills and achievements are products of a belief she holds constant: Creativity is based on breaking limiting thought patterns, busting through fear, taking risks, and persistently working hard toward your goals, if the individual wants to maximize their potential for a full life. Chronicle Books has included her in the 2017 publication of 200 Women Who Will Change the Way You See the World.
About the Gallery | The San Francisco Art Exchange focuses on popular iconography from the worlds of film, art, music and history guided by the thesis that popular iconography is the language a culture uses to speak to itself in real time and later memorializes those communications as important parts of historical record.
SFAE has sold original artwork of iconic album covers for The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, among many others. The gallery has also concluded landmark sales of rare photographs of Marilyn Monroe, Martin Luther King, Jr., Johnny Cash, and Muhammad Ali, to name a few. In addition, SFAE has represented treasured music and movie-related artifacts from private and celebrity archives, such as the Playboy Collection and the Brown Derby Collection.
At its downtown San Francisco gallery, SFAE has hosted live events by everyone from music superstars Brian Wilson and Graham Nash, to civil rights legend Clarence Jones and Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm. The gallery’s most recent project was the sale of a rare portfolio of photographs of President John F. Kennedy, celebrating the centennial of his birth in cooperation with the Kennedy Foundation, with a percentage of the proceeds benefitting the foundation.
