A new exhibition at Tempo Gallery meditates on the evolution of songs images, exploring exchanges throughout diverse genres, eras, and geographic locations as part of an homage to the very last century of songs and the graphic-makers that documented it. The presentation options images by Richard Avedon, Janette Beckman, Adam Cohen, Jem Cohen, Kevin Cummins, Rahim Fortune, Robert Frank, Hiro, Paul Graham, Peter Hujar, Ari Marcopoulos, Itzel Alejandra Martinez, Gordon Parks, Irving Penn, Rankin, Ming Smith, and Nick Waplington. The exhibition is curated by Mark Beasley, curatorial director of Pace Stay.
Presented chronologically on the gallery’s 1st floor, the photographs in Studio to Phase, which have not often been exhibited collectively, depict legendary musicians of the previous 70 years—including Billie Vacation, Janis Joplin, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, John Cage, The Rolling Stones, The Smiths, Spice Ladies, Beastie Boys, and more—and replicate the “radical continuum,” as termed by author Simon Reynolds, of audio. The images on see seize not only what it means to be a performer, but what it implies to be a member of an viewers.
Spanning early jazz, New York hip hop, British punk, European techno, and other musical actions, Studio to Phase examines the means that photographers have served cultivate mythologies close to performers and their respective scenes. The legendary venues and audiences of the depicted concert events, festivals and other performances are also crucial in the tales instructed in the images on view. Between the highlights in the exhibition are Smith’s images of jazz musicians, Marcopoulos’s pictures of the Beastie Boys and Iggy Pop, and Graham’s pictures of Berlin golf equipment and raves. Studio to Stage provides the background of new music as a boundless and continuous coalescing of diverse seems and geographies. Amid today’s political and social polarization, the exhibition highlights music’s likely for cultivating connections and enactments of appreciation.