Although it did include one of the highlights of the festival for me; an exhibition of the portraits taken of Mick Jagger, apparently the most photographed artist, from his first shoot at the age of 19 to the present day. Seeing a series of maybe 50 portraits depicting the same face over time was quite incredible. It becomes a record of fashions through the ages – not only clothes and hair but also the styles of the photographs and what visual imagery was considered on trend. The show was a collection of the most famous names in the business; Anton Corbijn, Terry O’Neill, Cecil Beaton, to name but a few. Interestingly, David Bailey didn’t want to include his famous portrait of Mick in a fur hoodie, surely one of the most iconic images of the singer. Also, there were supposed to be quite few portraits by Annie Liebowitz, which were not there; I couldn’t help wondering if this was a reflection of her current financial situation.
But the best thing about this show was the way it was curated. In an enormous church on the main street, you had to go through a dark corridor before the cburch opened up before you, images adorning the walls in a somewhat haphazard fashion, lit from below. It was truly awe-inspiring, and perhaps, on reflection, it helped to idolise ol’ Mick.
The rest of the Rock trail was in the Ateliers, in an exhibition I sort of whizzed through as I had to get somewhere else. Accompanied by snippets of sounds from the punk era, including radio shows as well as the music itself, it managed to bring together both photographs of bands (concert pics as well as posed portraits for album covers or other commercial means) as well as work which was inspired by the punk era. Things I noted was a lovely display of artwork for one of David Bowie’s albums (love the picture resting on pink buckets), a wapping great typo under a portrait of the wonderful Susan Sontag, and some interesting collages by fellow Mancunian Linder Sterling.
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