Photography Exhibition:
Soho Triad Fine Arts gallery

With a name such as his, British-born photographer Mick Rock's destiny was laid out before him: he had to work in the peculiar world of music. Yet, as he readily admits, it was more good fortune than good planning that led to his groundbreaking 1970s photo sessions, where he captured Lou Reed in his "Transformer" phase, Iggy and the Stooges circa Raw Power, and David Bowie as he morphed into Ziggy Stardust.

These and other Rock works -- uniquely personal shots of Debbie Harry, Syd Barrett (one-time Pink Floyd leader and tragic acid casualty), Talking Heads, Tori Amos, Andy Warhol and Truman Capote, plus punks The Dead Boys and The Ramones -- are currently being exhibited at the Soho Triad Fine Arts gallery, under the tag Drawn To The Flame of Rock’n’Roll. The exhibition is running through January 11, 1998.

"I was in the right place at the right time, you can't plan that. That's just something you can't prescribe in life," the tall, lean Rock told me as we took a tour of his work. "People ask me ‘How did you decide to be a rock'n'roll photographer?' Well, I never did, really. I was wandering around the London Film School, in a state of psychedelia -- and rock was the music of the times. I lived from day to day, and my so-called career developed from there."

With his disheveled halo of hair and erudite manner, Rock could be mistaken for a very hip professor. This makes a lot of sense, considering that prior to his lost days at film school, Rock studied modern languages at England's revered Cambridge University. At the time, he was hot for such French rebels as Baudelaire and Rimbaud. It wouldn't take a degree in psychology to realize that a similarly revolutionary, visionary pulse drove the rock'n'roll icons whom Rock worked with during the last three decades. "Art is often a mess, it's produced by chaotic personalities," he explains. "Clearly Iggy (Pop) was a mess, whereas David (Bowie) was a very sunny personality, a sunny kind of chaos."

"And Bowie also initiated things," he adds. "Not only did he co-produce, he was also good at putting people together and making things happen. Mick Ronson, for instance, got his creative juices sluicing [sic] by working with David. And the same could be said for me, as well." (Rock maintains close ties with Bowie and Reed; he'll be working with both on limited-edition book projects during 1998.)

"I was listening to Bowie's Hunky Dory; that was the beginning," Rock recalls. "That was the spark for me. It's as good an album as David's ever done. What he was drawing on to produce that -- influences such as Velvet Underground, Jacques Brel -- was very unusual, and inspiring for me." After having a Bowie story-cum-photo-shoot idea OK'd by Rolling Stone magazine in the early '70s, Rock was soon on his way as a freelancer.

Yet he isn't keen on over-analyzing his art. To his level-headed way of thinking, "You just get in and do the job, capture the moment. How much can you intellectualize it? It's not War and Peace." Rock explains how when he's working, the main idea "is throw out the intellect and follow the senses. You either like it or you don't. I shoot it the way I like, depending on the circumstances." One portrait of Freddie Mercury, for instance, was shot in Mercury's bedroom, with the Queen frontman reclining, relaxed and slightly vulnerable. The most candid Bowie shot is that of the Thin White Duke gazing at his reflection, Narcissus-style; this shot was taken in Bowie's English country home. The typical concert shot isn't Rock's staple.

When I ask Rock about the technical aspects of his craft, he confesses it's also something he avoids laboring over. "I never thought about it, I learned as I went along," he admits, point blank. "You need to be open to things, so you can approach it from a fresh way. I think that's really important in photography, where you're creating a moment, plucking it out of the air like fairy dust."

Drained by the lifestyle and bored by New Wave, Rock gradually tapered off rock'n'roll photography in the '80s and '90s. Instead, he made his mark art-directing and designing Aerosmith, Phil Spector and Rolling Stones boxed sets, and dabbling in more non-traditional photo collages (some of which are in the exhibition). In addition, he began working on early videos for Bowie, The Kinks and Paul McCartney. And though his most recognizable work reeks of early '70s excess (Bowie in high heels and little else, Pop higher than a trapeze artist), Rock's exhibition is not purely a trip down retro lane. Recent shots, such as that of Tori Amos in a warm mood, bring his work into the '90s with characteristic intimacy.

That's one aspect of his work that separates it from typical rock'n'roll shootings: there's a definite insider's quality to his work, a shared moment between subject and photographer (and, eventually, audience) that could only come about through heightened powers of understanding and collaboration, on both sides of the lens. Irrespective of whether it's Bowie praying in a Chicago hotel room, Iggy plus Stooges glaring out from a London basement, or Syd Barrett reclining on a lounge-room floor while his naked girlfriend plays wallflower in the corner, Rock's trademark intimacy shines through. Not surprisingly, there wasn't a lot of forward planning or instruction -- either from Rock or rock star -- going on at these sessions. In short, Rock just chose to let it roll.

In a broader perspective, Rock sees himself more as a social historian than rock-hack paparazzi. That's a fair comment, too, given that his work is so immediately identifiable with a certain time, place and face: Bowie with Ziggy Stardust, Iggy Pop as punk's wild child, campy Freddie Mercury, a beatific Jerry Garcia. ("He looks holy, don't you think?" Rocks asks me, pointing out an on-stage shot of the freak-flag-flying Deadhead. I agree.) "The influence of Bowie, Reed and Pop, culturally speaking, was enormous," Rock admits. "So, yes, I do feel like a cultural historian."

Witnessing this selection of his collected work is a lot like taking a trip in a time capsule aimed at the mid-to-late 20th century. I'm sure that in the far distant future, Rock's images and frozen moments in time will carry the same historical weight (and artistic worth) as Hendrix's guitar pyrotechnics, Bowie's androgynous alien mystique, or Deborah Harry's centerfold-with-brains pout. They're that powerful.

December 1997