Post by the Scribe on Apr 10, 2020 12:10:01 GMT
LINDA RONSTADT, “HASTEN DOWN THE WIND,” MALIBU, 1975
“I love Linda. She is a fabulous person,” Russell says. “So low key. We were shooting on the beach outside some music producer’s house in Malibu Colony. Shooting away and nothing was happening. The light was fading and the horse just appeared. I shot two frames: in the first one she is saying, ‘Don’t shoot! You’ll scare the horse,’ and looked like you couldn’t sell her to a circus…but in this one she’s a goddess.”
shhhh...you'll scare the horse..............
Capturing Classic Rock Art
carmelmagazine.com/archive/13ho/rock-art:
by Michael Chatfield
I never really wanted to be a photographer. I’m kind of a serious guy.” That’s an ironic statement coming from Ethan Russell, the guy who captured some of the most instantly recognized rock-and-roll images of all time. Russell shot the album covers of The Who’s “Who’s Next,” “Hasten Down the Wind” by Linda Ronstadt and The Rolling Stones “Get Yer Ya Yas Out!”
Plus he captured the album image of the Holy Grail of rock bands, The Beatles’ “Let it Be.” As Melissa Leon put it in The Daily Beast, “To tell the story of the now famed rock photographer…Ethan Russell is to strain the amount of luck you imagine any one human is allowed.”
Born in New York, Russell grew up in San Francisco and Carmel Valley. While in his early 20s, with no particular career path in mind, he decamped for London and was serendipitously invited to photograph Mick Jagger for a Rolling Stone magazine interview. Events snowballed from there.
Coupled with that luck, Russell was gifted with an extraordinary natural talent: an eye for composition, and an ability to put his subjects so at ease that the photographs he produced define the humans behind the rock stars. He credits his childhood experiences in Carmel Valley as the source of this skill.
“My folks had a big ranch in the Valley,” he says. “I’d go hunting there. When hunting, you’re very quiet, don’t attract attention…you move quickly and decisively and then back out of the way. That’s how I approached photography.”
In addition to album covers, Russell and his camera documented a startling number of images while hanging out with some of the most famous musicians of the golden age of British rock. Many of them will soon be on exhibition at Carmel’s Winfield Gallery.
“These images aren’t just photojournalism,” says gallery owner Chris Winfield. “At the beginning, these were just documents of rock and roll. Now they’re an art form.”
The exhibition runs December 1 through 31 at the Winfield Gallery on Dolores btwn. Ocean and 7th in downtown Carmel. During the opening night celebration, 20 percent of sales will benefit the Youth Arts Collective, a Peninsula nonprofit that teaches and mentors high school and college artists.
Russell will also present a multi-media lecture at Sunset Center on San Carlos and 9th in Carmel on February 8, 2014. For more information, visit www.winfieldgallery.com and www.sunsetcenter.org.
