Man outside a liquor store in Oakland, California, 1962. From Jim Marshall: Show Me the Picture by Amelia Davis, published by Chronicle Books 2019 © The Estate of Jim Marshall
When most people think of photographer Jim Marshall (1936-2010), scenes from rock and roll history come crashing to mind: Jimi Hendrix setting his guitar on fire during the Monterey Pop Festival; Johnny Cash flipping the bird at San Quentin State Prison; Janis Joplin lounging like a vixen in a sparkly mini-dress with a bottle of Southern Comfort in hand; the Charlatans playing the Summer of Love concert in Golden Gate Park.
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But Marshall’s roots go deeper than rock: they thread through the history of jazz, in the nightclubs and festivals where he honed his skills as self-taught photographer coming of age in Jim Crow America. A perennial outsider, Marshall championed the underdog, the spaces where the oppressed and exploited transformed their pain and sorrow into beauty and art.
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As a man of the streets, Marshall understood the power of the activist to transform the way we see and think. He used the camera as his instrument, to tell the story of the people and the times — not just the headlining names but the regular folks who fought for the cause that we’re still fighting for more than half a century after he made some of his most indelible photographs.
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Thelonious Monk and his family in their apartment’s kitchen, New York City, 1963. This photo was shot for a Saturday Evening Post story. From Jim Marshall: Show Me the Picture by Amelia Davis, published by Chronicle Books 2019 © The Estate of Jim Marshall
Jimmy Rushing backstage at the Hunt Club, Monterey Jazz Festival, Monterey, California, 1960. From Jim Marshall: Show Me the Picture by Amelia Davis, published by Chronicle Books 2019 © The Estate of Jim Marshall