Direct from its United States tour, Who Shot Rock & Roll is on at the Auckland Art Gallery until 3 March 2013 and if you're a music buff and haven't yet been, it is well worth a look.
Who Shot Rock & Roll has 173 works from more than 100photographers and many rare and never-before-exhibited images of subjects such as music legends The Beatles, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Freddy Mercury, Janis Joplin and more. Photographers include Diane Arbus, Roberta Bayley, Henry Diltz, Godlis, Dennis Hopper, David LaChappelle, Annie Leibovitz, Linda McCartney.
Organised by the Brooklyn Museum and curated by photographic historian and author Gail Buckland, Who Shot Rock & Roll is the first museum exhibition to acknowledge photographers for their collaborative and creative role in the history of popular music.
'This exhibition is not a history of rock-n-roll, but of the men and women who have photographed it and given the music its visual identity,' says Buckland. 'From its earliest days, rock-n-roll was captured in photographs that personalised and frequently eroticised musicians. Photographers were handmaidens to the rock-n-roll revolution, and their work communicates the social and cultural transformations that rock helped bring about from the 1950s onwards.'
The Auckland exhibition is the first time Who Shot Rock & Roll will have travelled outside of the United States and is the second international exhibition presented by Auckland Art Gallery since its reopening on 3 September 2011.
