A Picture really is worth a Thousand Words...

So as usual I headed down to what is fast becoming my home away from home(Victoria) to spend my days off with Jen. Now we always have a great time when I go to visit or when she sneaks home from school for a weekend and this time was no exception. The cool thing we did this visit was go to the Royal British Columbia Museum to see a traveling exhibit entitled "Linda McCartney's Sixties- A portrait of an era". Jen had to go for a class that she is taking and really didn't have to convince me to hard as all the photos are of rock icons from that era, and being the music fan that I am I couldn't have been more excited to go see this.

So off we go to the museum, excited to see the exhibit and we walk in the doors and what do they have ...But John Lennon's Rolls Royce in all of its yellow decorative glory. If you haven't seen this car then go take a look, Google it or some thing it really is a car only a very rich person could get away with being in but looking at the car and realizing that icons of an age in music that I adore were in there was very cool. So I pay my admission and off we go up the escalator to see the exhibit.

At the top of the escalator is the temporary gallery..I walk in and they have classic albums in glass cases and music from the time playing over the speakers and a room full of amazing pictures of people I have listened to and read about...I was in my element...

Now I like to think that I'm a relativily cultured guy, at least open minded, but Jen is the art buff here and usually has to tell me why stuff is art, and I never had really understood photography in that I thought all it took was a good eye to get a good picture, but this exhibit changed my perception. Now I still think it takes a good eye to get that great picture, but in looking at these pictures you can tell that they were taken by someone that the people in them were comfortable with. There were of course a lot of Beatles pictures and the thing that got me was how much they all still seemed to like each other and how happy they still seemed. As most of the beadle pictures were taken in the final year of the band(1969) during sessions for Let It Be and Abbey Road, a time when it was reported that relationships were at their most strained point it was interesting to see a picture of John Lennon and Paul McCartney laughing over writing a song. It was looking at these Beatles pictures that it struck me that comfort and intimacy can be conveyed rather well through a camera lens. I think if these pictures were taken by someone from outside the bands inner circle that they wouldn't have turned out as amazing as they did.

I guess I could go on and I wish I could find a link to the whole exhibit in pictures but it was a very cool thing to see. Like the picture of Bob Dylan at the top of this post. He looks completely at ease and not even like the Bob Dylan that we have seen in pictures for years. It was taken without his knowledge and to me he doesn't look like the tortured artist that he usual conveys through pictures. If you have a chance to go see it I suggest you do, for music fans especially...Those at the home office I am talking to you...I came away from it with a greater appreciation for photography as an art form ....