Photo Stills, Nash & Young
Before the Nash show went public, at a reception for the artist April 19, a swirl of photo aficionados surrounded Nash and friends in a festive gathering. I came to the party with a fresh appreciation of Nash's visual work, as it's part of a special issue that American Photo is putting together (July/August) about musicians who are serious photographers.
Graham Nash made his name as a singer with the Hollies and then Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, but his claim to fame in the photo world is his pioneering use of digital Iris printers to create fine-art prints. This pursuit led to Nash Editions, one of the world’s preeminent digital printing studios. But Nash’s love of photography goes way back before his music career — his father turned him on to the medium when he was 10 — and he’s always carried cameras to document his life. (His 1970 shot of Neil Young is at left.) A selection of Nash’s images are now on display in Eye to Eye: The Photographs of Graham Nash, at New York City’s Morrison Hotel Gallery through the beginning of May.
“It’s all just me shooting off my mouth, representing my world and the world I see,” says Nash of his songwriting as well as his candid black-and-white photography. “The images in this show are oriented toward famous people who are my friends, with good reason: This is a celebrity rock-and-roll gallery, so they chose this stuff and I’m quite pleased with their choices.” Among the selections are photos of Bob Dylan, Cass Elliot, Jackson Browne, Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, and of course Crosby, Stills, and Young.
The Morrison Hotel Gallery, at 124 Prince Street in SoHo, is named after the famous cover photo of the Doors album shot by rock photographer Henry Diltz, who is one of the gallery’s co-founders. With branches in Los Angeles and La Jolla, California, the gallery specializes in rock-and-roll photography.
Before the Nash show went public, at a reception for the artist April 19, a swirl of photo aficionados surrounded Nash and friends in a festive gathering. I came to the party with a fresh appreciation of Nash’s visual work, as it’s part of a special issue that American Photo is putting together (July/August) about musicians who are serious photographers.