Show Marks the Debut U.S. Exhibition of Famed Photographers and Stones
Insiders Michael Cooper, Who Chronicled the Band in the U.K. and Elsewhere
in the Late '60s, and Dominique Tarle, Who Documented Their 1971 Exile in
France
Tarle will attend opening, as will NBC-TV's Medium star Jake Weber, seen at
age 7 in several of Tarle's images
SAN FRANCISCO, May 8 /PRNewswire/ -- San Francisco Art Exchange (SFAE)
shines a light on a legendary half-decade of Stones lore and rock 'n roll
history overall with "Beggars To Exiles: Unseen Photographs Of The Rolling
Stones, 1966-1971," a new exhibition opening with a reception on Saturday,
July 12, 7PM. Presented by SFAE in association with U.K.-based Raj Prem
Fine Art Photography, the unprecedented show will feature approximately
sixty limited edition images. Many are previously unseen, all are
exquisitely rare and possessed of a behind-the-scenes intimacy that takes
them worlds beyond celebrity portraiture. The work will be evenly split
between pieces by photographers Dominique Tarle and the late Michael
Cooper, both also denizens of the Rolling Stones' inner circle. For both
photographers, the show marks the debut U.S. exhibition of work from their
archives, as well as the first time they have been jointly exhibited
anywhere.
The show's title refers to two of the Stones' album masterpieces,
1968's Beggars Banquet, released during the group's Chelsea heyday as
emperors of mod London, and 1971's Exile On Main Street, recorded on the
French Riviera one infamous summer when the band and their entourage were
holed up at Villa Nellcote. Offering both stark contrast and complementary
flow, the exhibition's images visually chart the band's dramatic evolution
during these years, with British photographer Michael Cooper capturing '66
to '70 and France's Tarle represented exclusively by images taken in '71.
Tarle will attend the opening, as will actor Jake Weber (Medium, NBC-TV),
who is seen at age seven in a number of Tarle's images; he and his brother
were at Nellcote all summer with their father Tommy Weber, then a Stones
insider.
"Raj and I wanted to come up with something compelling to spotlight
Dominique and Michael together, because they're two important photographers
who were part of a seminal Stones era that's respected and revered by fans
and by the band," says SFAE co-founder/director Theron Kabrich. "Beyond
that, we see it as another in a series of shows we've done to raise
awareness about era-defining moments in contemporary pop culture history.
This window into the Stones' journey also chronicles a revolutionary
generational change that was taking place globally. The fact that these
images are rarely seen and little known, especially in America, makes
Beggars To Exiles particularly exciting for us."
"Where the beau monde converged upon the demimonde," was how London's
Sunday Times once described the milieu that inspired Michael Cooper's work.
The International Herald Tribune called him, "The photographic Boswell of
swinging London in the '60s," and The Economist wrote that Cooper's oeuvre
was the, "best evidence yet of the cultural ferment between art and music
in the 1960s." Central to the heady scene that passed before his lens were
the Stones, and Cooper's access to them was extraordinary given his tight
friendship with Keith Richards. Cooper's cover shot for Their Satanic
Majesties Request (he also did the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's) is among Beggars
To Exiles' images, as are photographs of the Stones -- including Brian
Jones -- in London, at Stonehenge and on holiday in California and
Morocco. Cooper took his own life in 1973 at age 31, leaving an archive of
over 70,000 images to his son Adam, along with a note saying, "they will
eventually be worth something." About 600 of them were published in the
long-sold out limited edition book Blinds And Shutters (1989, Genesis
Publications), but most of them have never been seen, much less exhibited.
French photographer Dominique Tarle's images pick up chronologically
where Cooper's leave off, when the Stones were encamped in 1971 at the
Villa Nellcote, where Keith had set up house with Anita Pallenberg and
their son Marlon. It became the location where Exile On Main Street was
made, with the help of a mobile recording truck connected to a basement
studio. Tarle recounted to the New York Times that, "A carnival of
characters paraded through: Terry Southern Gram Parsons, John Lennon, even
a tribal band from Bengal ... dope dealers from Marseille; petty thieves,
who stole most of the drugs and half the furniture; and hangers-on, all of
them there to witness what was happening."
In addition to images that reveal the band with well-known visitors to
Nellcote -- including alt-country legend Gram Parsons and Michael Cooper,
in one of the last photos taken of him -- Tarle's work features pieces that
capture the sun-dappled languor of a summer sojourn in the south of France.
These striking images have little sense of being about celebrity, but
rather are artworks that just happen to have famous faces in them. Also in
the mix are a number of pieces featuring the children who were in residence
that summer, including Marlon Richards and Jake Weber, who is captured in
several images with Keith. At SFAE's opening, Tarle and Weber will see each
other for the first time since 1972.
Dominique Tarle's images of the Stones at Nellcote have also been the
subject of a sold-out, limited edition Genesis Publications volume, Exile
(2002). In an interview about the book, Genesis' publisher Brian Roylance
suggested to Tarle that there were similarities between his work and
Cooper's. Tarle replied, "... maybe Michael Cooper and I realised that
pictures are far more important than the photographers themselves. We
surely could choose something at the right time, at the right place, with
the right people. For myself, I could only say that the whole of the game
was to remain invisible and to have the least possible impact on what was
going on around me."
Opening July 12, Beggars To Exiles: Unseen Photographs Of The Rolling
Stones, 1966-1971 will be on display at SFAE through late August, 2008.
Co-founded in 1983 by Theron Kabrich and James Hartley, San Francisco
Art Exchange, LLC -- "Gallery Of The Popular Image" -- is a global leader
in purveying world-class pop culture imagery (458 Geary Street /
415.441.8840)
For details, visit http://www.sfae.com
SOURCE San Francisco Art Exchange
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susan-stewart@att.net, both for San Francisco Art Exchange
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