Forever young
The Boston Globe
An Amesbury psychotherapist reaches into his past -- and finds galleries
(and Martin Scorsese) interested in his 40-year-old photos of an icon
By Steven Rosenberg, Globe Staff | January 2005
In Douglas Gilbert's Amesbury darkroom, the black-and-white silhouettes
slowly emerge, revealing images of a person and a time that changed the face
of rock 'n' roll history. The person is Bob Dylan, the time is the summer of
1964, and the photos were hidden from the public for four decades.
douglasrgilbert.com
That will change next month, when the photographer -- now a psychotherapist
-- holds his first public showing of the prints at the Perfect Exposure
Gallery in Los Angeles. The show, entitled ''Bob Dylan: Unscripted," travels
to Boston this fall.
The 42 exhibit photos are a fraction of the 900 pictures Gilbert took of
Dylan over a seven-day period during the summer of 1964 in Woodstock, N.Y.,
Manhattan, and at the Newport Folk Festival. Most of the photos were taken
at Dylan's retreat in Woodstock, which was owned by his manager, Albert
Goldman. The photos show a 23-year-old Dylan at ease with his music, and his
friends -- who included poet Allen Ginsberg, writer Terry Southern, and
musicians John Sebastian and Ramblin' Jack Elliott.
The photo shoot was Gilbert's first assignment as a 21-year-old staff
photographer for Look magazine. He remembers driving while Dylan played the
harmonica and Sebastian sang ''Mr. Tambourine Man"; Ginsberg holding a large
tree limb over his shoulder and laughing hysterically; Dylan placing an
empty picture frame around his neck at the Kettle of Fish bar in New York,
and saying, ''Take one now, the picture's already framed."
But Look never published the photos.
''The editor just thought that he was not fit for a family magazine, and
Look prided itself on being a family magazine," said Gilbert, a
psychotherapist who continues to work as a professional photographer. ''He
said he thought the photos looked too scruffy."
A year later, Look ran a major story on Dylan but did not use Gilbert's
photos.
When the magazine folded in 1971, Gilbert was given the negatives from the
shoot. He kept them under wraps during his moves to Chicago, Newburyport,
and Amesbury. Unsure of who owned the rights to the pictures, Gilbert was
content to let them go unpublished. He never bothered to print and frame a
Dylan photo for himself. He went on to win photography awards for other work
and published a book on writer C.S. Lewis.
''There were long periods when I forgot about them," Gilbert said.
But two years ago, another former Look photographer, Douglas Kirkland, told
Gilbert that he did, in fact, own the rights to the photos. A year later,
when PBS began work on a Dylan documentary, Gilbert's daughter asked the
producers if they might be interested in the photos.
Then came the call from Dylan's office in New York. They wanted to see the
entire collection Gilbert printed 31 contact sheets, and sent them to New
York. Soon afterward, Gilbert learned that several had been chosen to run in
a booklet included in the recently released CD, ''The Bootleg Series Volume
6: Bob Dylan Live in 1964."
''I think they're remarkable. They were all amazing. We were just floored,"
said Geoff Gans, Dylan's art director.
Gans was a week away from finishing up the artwork for the CD when he saw
the photos. He quickly pulled 11 photographs that had been scheduled to run
and replaced them with Gilbert's pictures.
Gans called the photographs ''technically beautiful," and lauded Gilbert's
perspective and depth of field. He said Dylan is a fan of the photos.
''One of the things Bob really liked is you can see the furniture, which to
him really dates the time. He also liked the photos of him sitting around
with a bunch of people because they weren't just focused on him," Gans said.
Chelsea Hoffman, an associate producer for the PBS documentary on Dylan that
is being directed by Martin Scorsese, said she expects several of Gilbert's
photos to run in the film.
''They're very candid, very innocent, and not posed," she said.
Gilbert's instincts told him to focus on Dylan's interactions, but not
become a participant in the conversation. The one time he asked Dylan to
pose for a photo, the musician declined.
''I was trying to set up an interaction with him and someone else, and I
said, 'Could you do this because I would like to make the situation look
real?"' Gilbert said. ''And he stopped and he looked me right in the eye,
and said, 'Nothing's real, man.' So I didn't do anything more after that.
And the point was really clear. It was more than the words.
''I knew that just my presence changed a few things, and I tried to be as
inconspicuous and quiet as I could be. I believe he appreciated that. He
never asked me to stop photographing. He would let me wander around where he
was and we got along fine."
The photos, of Dylan sitting with friends, playing music, writing, and
standing in New York City, tell the story of a young poet and musician
enjoying life. Gilbert, who is now 62, has not identified a theme from the
collection, but believes it reveals a vulnerable side of Dylan that's rarely
seen in photos after 1964.
''I knew that it was a pretty rare experience, even at that point," Gilbert
said. The pictures were taken before Dylan produced much of his seminal
work, such as ''Like A Rolling Stone," ''Just Like a Woman," and ''Lay,
Lady, Lay."
''It wasn't long after that when he began to be much less accessible,"
Gilbert said, ''and I really felt as if I was able to spend some time with
him when he was not as guarded, not as private, and it's part of what makes
the photographs unique."
Gilbert, who chose a 35-millimeter Leica range finder camera for most of the
shoot, used available light and did not use a tripod. His photos rarely seem
rushed and reflect a relaxed, sometimes pensive Dylan.
One picture shows him drinking red wine and watching late-night TV alone.
Many were taken in a Woodstock cafe, where Dylan wrote on a manual
typewriter in a second-floor office.
The writing, said Gilbert, was part of Dylan's routine, lasting about 15
minutes at a time. Once, when Dylan left, Gilbert read the words on the
typewriter paper. Months later, in 1964, when he purchased the album
''Another Side of Bob Dylan," Gilbert recognized some of the poetry on the
liner notes and realized that it had been written during the photo shoot.
Gilbert has read Dylan's recent book, ''Chronicles: Volume 1," and still
listens to the musician, who, he says, has influenced his life.
''He worked on my thinking," Gilbert said. ''His work was really helpful to
me in clarifying a lot of what I was sensing, and feeling, but didn't have
words yet to put it all together. When I would hear his work it would kind
of come into focus."
Gilbert's photographs of Bob Dylan are on view at his website:
douglasrgilbert.com |
