Anyone who has seen D.A. Pennebaker’s classic documentary, Don’t Look Back, will recognize the ‘60s-era Bob Dylan captured here: skinny, with pegleg pants, heeled boots, Ray-Bans and that mass of frizzy curls sometimes framed by tendrils of cigarette smoke.
Videos by American Songwriter
Label: OMNIBUS
[Rating: 3 Stars]
Anyone who has seen D.A. Pennebaker’s classic documentary, Don’t Look Back, will recognize the ‘60s-era Bob Dylan captured here: skinny, with pegleg pants, heeled boots, Ray-Bans and that mass of frizzy curls sometimes framed by tendrils of cigarette smoke. Looks of bemusement, impatience or inscrutability offstage; look of youthful earnestness on. The difference is that photographer Barry Feinstein, a friend, was not a documentarian doing a warts-and-all chronicle of Dylan’s 1966 European tour. After “the mystery,” not the obvious, Feinstein captures it in images like the one of Dylan in Liverpool, frolicking through an empty lot as if he were in A Hard Day’s Night, or the one with fan Jimmy Carter, snapped during Dylan and the Band’s 1974 tour. Seeking portraits, not performance shots, which he didn’t enjoy doing, Feinstein still caught some stunners, which seem even more artful because he used only available light and black-and-white film (a sadly soon-to-be-archaic medium). The combination makes for some indelible studies of light and shadow-and some wonderful insights into the human side of an icon.
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