A New Exhibition Presents Unseen Photos From 40 Years of Rock ’n’ Roll

Like most Nashvillians, I love music. I’m always down for a good rock doc, and a portion of my home library is dedicated to books about music and musicians. When it comes to rock ’n’ roll, photography is the medium that best captures the spirit of the music and the people who make it. Just thinking about rock history fills my mind with iconic photos — album covers, classic posters and live performances in holy black-and-white.

Rarefied Rock ’n’ Roll Photography, currently on view at Modfellows Art & Design Gallery, is a display of rock-music photos from five artists who offer unique, insightful takes on live performance pics, portraiture, classic band shots and pensive, candid captures of life on the road. Rock ’n’ roll images are ubiquitous in popular culture — we’ve all seen Andy Warhol’s photo of Joe Dallesandro’s crotch on the cover of the The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, or Pennie Smith’s snap of Paul Simonon smashing his bass onstage at The Palladium, which of course served as the cover art for The Clash’s London Calling. But Rarefied Rock ’n’ Roll Photography mostly features images by emerging and lesser-known photographers with first-edition prints displayed for the very first time. 

Local architect Price Harrison is also an accomplished photographer, and he showed a color-filled display of images of bar booths, ticket booths, storefronts and hotel stairways at Dane Carder Studio in September 2017. His contributions here are a far more feral pack of pics, capturing garage-band scenes in late-1980s Memphis and New York. In these shadowy black-and-white shots, there’s no separation between the front of the stage and the front rows of the crowd, and the after-party is as important as the performance. These are energized group portraits of rockers and ragers, and they’re some of the rawest images in the show.

It was also back in the 1980s when Suze Dodd started shooting rock bands and writing reviews for the West Coast punk zine Flipside, and her work has graced album art by bands like Mudhoney and The Dirtbombs. By the 1990s, Dodd had developed into a consummate rock photog, and her images of the early grunge music scene are another highlight of the show. Dodd’s contributions include pictures of Eddie Vedder singing at a show when Pearl Jam was still known as Mookie Blaylock, and Layne Staley of Alice in Chains slithering through the third Lollapalooza back in 1993. The pictures are colorful and full of sweaty rock vibes, but Dodd’s portrait of Iggy Pop, Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic is also packed with attitude: Cobain flips off the camera while Novoselic gags himself with his index finger. Iggy sneers like a brat. 

Lee Crum is the show’s best-known and most widely published photographer, and his pictures are unique standouts. Crum’s images are the exhibition’s most experimental — the artist processes his black-and-white pics to look like grainy graphite drawings with a distinctive blue hue. I find that a little distracting, because it throws off my expectations of raw, spontaneous rock photography. That said, “KISS, Little Rock Arkansas 1976” is one of the best photos in the show. And a gorgeous, half-out-of-focus portrait of Dr. John from 1978 reads like an elegy for the New Orleans music man we lost back in June.

Rich Modica is a photographer, art collector, former tour manager, and the owner of Modfellows, along with his wife Julie. Modica’s intimate experiences with musicians on the road give his photographs a unique perspective, and a shot of The Go-Go’s frontwoman Belinda Carlisle posing next to a pink Jeep at Graceland in Memphis is a great reflection on how the 1950s influenced the 1980s. It’s also a silly, candid snap that captures the kinds of hijinks musicians use to kill time between shows. 

Modica’s works also include remarkable portraits of the Ramones. “Dee Dee Ramone Whiskey A Go-Go, Hollywood 1978” shows the author of “Eat That Rat” and “Chinese Rock” staring sweetly down at his low-slung bass. A portrait of Joey Ramone from the same show captures the iconic punk singer from the chest up. Ramone’s fist around the mic is completely lost in his curly black hair, which pours over his shoulders and blends into a shiny black confusion with the sleeve of his leather jacket.

Will Fenwick is a 20-year-old photographer, videographer and writer based in Louisville, Ky., who is currently touring the country to cover music festival season for sites like Magnetic Magazine. Fenwick represents the latest generation of rock ’n’ roll image-makers, and his pictures of bands like The Raconteurs and Tame Impala bring the exhibition up to date, and offer vivid proof that raucous rock ’n’ roll — and fantastic rock photography — continues to roar and flash in the 21st century.