The BOB DYLAN picture archive

(Last Update - 25 November 2008)

News -

The Archive - Some pages being hosted on coldhaus.com (now shown in RED) have been temporarily unavailable as they have been converted into a compressed zip format for some obscure reason ! We have so far been unable to make contact there so if 'tobywans' at coldhaus is reading this, please get in touch ! Failing this, the missing years will be reposted elsewhere as soon as possible !

Meanwhile......we are compiling a major new page on the 1975 Rolling Thunder tour and will be posting the results here very soon - we have over 700 photos so far, but many descriptions might benefit from your knowledge or imagination, or both ! The majority of published photos as available in the Rolling Thunder Logbooks and the Live 1975 booklet and elsewhere have very little documentation, so any help with identifying photos will be appreciated.

Elio Rooster's "Top 100" page of Dylan photos > http://www.maggiesfarm.it:80/eliotoptenindice.htm

Kevin Mazur - 2 recent quotes on his photos for "Love & Theft" (2001) - (see 2001 part 2)

"One of my favorite jobs was when I got a call to shoot Bob Dylan in the recording studio. I was bringing home my new baby and I was in the hospital and my phone rang and wife says, "Who wants you to work tonight?" And my mother-in-law right away was like "You're crazy if you think youre going to work tonight, you are bringing the baby home". I said "Well, they want me to film Bob Dylan in a recording studio", and my wife's like "Oh, well, you gotta go". So, low and behold, I go to the studio and it was a great experience, I got to see Bob record and stuff and I get a call like a month later from Donny Iner, the President of Columbia Records saying "Hey, Congratulations, Bob's album cover looks great" — I say "What are you talking about?" He goes "You don't know?" I go "What?" He goes "Bob liked your picture and he bumped the portrait session and used the photo from the recording session of yours". So I am like, "Wow, I got a Bob Dylan Album Cover".

"I photographed Bob many times ; I did his “Love and Theft” album cover. We went to a recording studio and had a very intimate shooting session. We spent a whole day driving around from place to place and snapping pictures. Just two cars : his and mine. That was unforgettable."

Bob Dylan : Through the Eyes of Joe Alper - Now available ! Highly recommended by various people who have seen previews, this excellent new book of the late Joe Alper's photos of Dylan from 1961 to 1965 includes shots from various New York venues and many others taken at Alper's home in NY where Dylan stayed while on tour, and later shots such as Dylan playing electric for the first time at Newport. Most have never been published in any form before. Individual prints of photos are also available. More information here - http://www.dylanbook.com/

Dylan's back pages - Review by Greg Haymes - Times Union, Saratoga - August 14, 2008

Dylan and his girlfriend Suze Rotolo spent 10 days staying with Joe and Jackie Alper and their family on Brandywine Avenue in Schenectady. Jackie was a folksinger and a sparkplug for the local folk music community. And fortunately, Joe Alper was a freelance photographer, capturing the pre-superstar Dylan in approximately 600 photographs between 1961-1965. Now Joe's son, George Alper, has gathered together a big batch of those photos in the brand new photo book, "Bob Dylan: Through the Eyes of Joe Alper." Of course, there have been dozens of Dylan photo books published over the years, but precious few if any are as revealing as these intimate, unguarded, black and white shots of Dylan relaxing around the house, eating breakfast, watching television and building castles out of wooden blocks on the living room floor. Also included are photos of Dylan performing around the Capital Region, in Greenwich Village and at the Newport Folk Festival. A few of Alper's photos were first seen by the general public in "The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare and Unreleased) 1961-1991," the three-CD box set of Dylan rarities that was was released by Columbia Records back in 1991, but the majority of these photos have never been seen before.

Barry Feinstein Exhibition & new book - Snap Galleries, Birmingham UK

Snap Galleries is to exhibit Barry Feinstein's collection of historic Dylan photographs for the first time in the UK.

Opening on Saturday 3 May 2008 to coincide with the publication of "Real Moments", Feinstein's new hardcover book of Dylan photos, the exhibition will feature work which hasn't been shown or offered for sale before. As the official photographer on the 1966 tour, he shot the cover pic on the No Direction Home CD/DVD, of Dylan standing outside a car at Aust Ferry

The "Real Moments" book will be available at £25 from Snap Galleries, before other retailers have it in stock - Snap will also be includling its' Dylan exhibition poster for customers buying it from them.

More info - http://www.snapgalleries.com/

Note - One thing I learned from Guy White at Snap is that Feinstein took the cover shot for "The Times They Are A-Changin' " in 1963,. and NOT Don Hunstein as often credited (our 1963 page to be updated accordingly !).

Paul Till & "Blood on the Tracks" cover - his updated website has the story on this, and other photos of Dylan.

Rowland Scherman - His back pages - Article from the Boston Globe, 3 February 2008 by Geoff Edgers -

"In 1967 (sic - in fact it was 1965), he took what would become his most famous photo. He and his wife, Joan, went to see Dylan play at the Washington Coliseum. Scherman took a Nikon with two rolls of film and, during the show, decided to head backstage. The security guards tried to keep him away, but he shouted at them. "I'm from Life," he said, and brushed past them, close to Dylan. He got the shot quickly - the singer's thick, afro-like hair silhouetted in a halo of blue light. Columbia's art director loved the picture, and it ended up on the cover of "Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits." Scherman earned $300 and a Grammy}"

From Wikipedia - The cover photograph of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits was taken by Rowland Scherman at Dylan's 28 November 1965 concert in Washington, D.C. The cover won the 1967 Grammy award for "Best Album Cover, Photography"

Rolling Thunder Logbook - by Sam Shepard (Da Capo Press (USA) Sanctuary (UK), large paperback, 2005)

In case you haven't seen the latest edition (2005), it has many new & previously unpublished photos by Ken Regan. The introduction says it has "a different selection of photographs", so many from the first edition are presumably not included (1977). The foreword by T-Bone Burnett is good reading too ! Should be easily available at Amazon and other outlets.

Adelaide 1978 - Some new concert photos by Peter Armstrong on the 1978 page

New Archive pages (see main index above) -

2001_2 "Love & Theft" - photos by Kevin Mazur, Ken Regan & David Gahr

1998 updated (12 October) - Glastonbury with Nick Cave, Belfast - 3 photos by John Caruth, Ottawa - 4 by dora, New York City 17 January, and others !

1978_2 (Fall USA Tour) (26 Sept)

2004_5 (Fall USA Tour & misc press photos etc.)

2003_2 & 3 (19 Sept)

1990, 1988 & 1984 (16 Sept)

2008 - 3 (USA & Canada summer tour) - Thanks for photos to Erick Larson, Geoff, Linda MacDonald, Lucas Blue, Samantha Brown, Weirdmonkey, Anon. and all other photographers !

Revised 1965 pages, parts 1 & 2 - now with more accurate documentation & many additional photos.

Drawn Blank - collected shots & scans

2008 - 2 (North American & European tour) - Thanks for photos to Cami, Elio Rooster, Mozart, Petr Novotny & all other photographers.

2008_- 1 (Texas, Mexico & S.America)

1962 updated (March 2008)

1968 (Nov 2007)

Pre-1961 (Nov 2007)

1999 parts 1 - 5 (Nov 2007)

2001 - parts 3 4 & 5 (Nov 2007) (1 & 2 updated Nov 2007)

2000 (updated Nov 2007)

2007 - European / Australia & NZ / USA Tours (updated Nov 2007)

2006 # 5 - Fall tour USA & Canada (May 07)

2006 # 4 (Modern Times) & 1997 Page (Jan.07)

1971, 1977 & 1994 (Feb. 07)

Any suggestions / corrections / photo submissions etc are always welcome. Please contact Stew.

Notes on Photographers (click here)

Acknowledgements -

Please note that all images used on this site are for the purposes of review and comment, and to provide an illustration of Dylan's long career, and therefore, according to counsel, are within the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. And, as per the recent outcome of Prince's lawsuit against a fan publication, it is believed that this non-commercial project does not infringe on the artists' intellectual property rights. The copyright-holder's permission should of course be sought for any commercial use of the images, and contact information for the photographers or their agents is shown in the above notes on photographers where known. If any photographer or copyright-holder can give better information than we have shown then please make contact.

Thanks are due to dylanstubs & tobywansDad for their particularly large allowance of webspace for these pages and to all other contributors. If you have web-space that we could use even short-term it may be useful - please contact Stew.

Thanks to the following for their particular help and permission to show photos :

Jaye Alper (Joe Alper Photo Collection LLC)

Peter Armstrong (Australia)

Quino Castro (Spain)

Gianni (Italy)

Ed Grazda - www.groupM35.com

Al Kaplan - http://thepriceofsilver.blogspot.com/

Linda MacDonald - http://www.geocities.com/milocurtis@sbcglobal.net/

Joy Munsey - Larry Campbell website http://members.cox.net/larrycampbell2000/index#Index

Pete Rehill (England)

Stephanie Rae (USA)

Elio Rooster (Italy) - see his "Top 100" page of other photographers here > http://www.maggiesfarm.it:80/eliotoptenindice.htm

Thanks to the following sites for permission to include other photos :

www.themusicarchive.com/

www.musicfoto.com/

Associated pages -

The Never Ending Winter Pool Gallery 2007

Alternative & Emergency Dylanpool gallery - due to the occasional abscence of administrators at the now defunct dylanpool, alternative photo galleries were being maintained here from December 2005 onwards, which may include photos not added to the Archive main pages as yet.. Thanks to all who have helped with this, in particular dylanstubs for hosting the pages

2007 > January - February - March - April/May - June

2006 > December - November - October - September - August - July - June - May - April - March - February - December 2005 - January 2006

Dylanstubs - Have you got any scans of tickets or posters ? Please take a look at http://dylanstubs.com/

Bob Dylan CDR Artwork Guide - For the most comprehensive collection of Dylan CD artwork see Ole's site at http://www.dylanimages.com/

stewART CD artwork - mainly the more recent years of the NET

This project is made possible by - Karen Banks, Dag Braathen, Peter Stone Brown, Stefan Flach, Ford Prefect, Jim Grant, Stewart Grant, Adrian Hayes, jackobob, Joany, Tricia Jungwirth, Les Kokay, George Lewis, Nichole, Pete Rehill, Mark Scalise, tobywansDad, Ole Sivert Warnes, Mark Webster, Wildbluey and others at All Along the Watchtower , the Never Ending Pool and the now-terminated Dylanpool & elsewhere.