The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art welcomes guest curator and photography historian Gail Buckland this weekend for the opening of her exhibit “Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present.” Based on the photos from her book of the same title, the exhibit opens for members Friday, June 25th, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The show opens to the public on Saturday, and Buckland will give a talk that afternoon at 2 p.m., followed by a booksigning.
“Who Shot Rock & Roll” highlights the best of music photography, with an emphasis on the photographers themselves. “Most of the attention has always been on the people who make the music,” Buckland says. “Not incorrectly — we should celebrate those people. But I felt the time had come that the people who gave rock its image also need to be acknowledged.”
Collecting hundreds of photographs from filing cabinets and rolls of film, Buckland tells the story of who took the picture, how, and why.
“Rock-and-roll was a bipartite revolution: the sound and the image,” she says. “The music alone could not create the revolution. The kids were reacting to the hairstyles and the clothes and the body language. And the people who gave rock its image are very, very important. Revolutions have to be documented to be believed.”
“Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present,” June 26th to September 26th. For more information, visit brooksmuseum.org or call 544-6200
