Studio to Stage: Music Photography from the Fifties to the Present

A new exhibition examining 70 years of music-making has premiered online, coinciding with a display at Pace Gallery in New York. ‘Studio to Stage: Music Photography from the Fifties to the Present’ collates the work of 17 photographers and filmmakers, and includes intimate studio portraits, striking onstage performances and snapshots of communities that the artists themselves inspired. 

Highlights include Ming Smith’s photos of experimental jazz pioneer Sun Ra in New York in 1978, while Janette Beckman captures Sade posing with a police car in the same city five years later. Scenes like ‘A Great Day in Hip Hop, Harlem’, by photojournalist and film director Gordon Parks, meanwhile, contrast with Nick Waplington’s 1990s snapshot of a sunrise at Glastonbury Festival.

Elsewhere, Adam Cohen’s photos of hardcore bands Minor Threat and Fugazi in mid-‘80s USA appear opposite recent images of neo-soul singer Erykah Badu by Rahim Fortune. Kevin Cumming offers photos of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis in a Manchester rehearsal room in 1979. And legendary photographer Rankin’s work includes both a black-and-white snap of David Bowie in 1995, and a shot of pop sensations The Spice Girls.

‘Studio to Stage: Music Photography from the Fifties to the Present’ can be accessed online via Pace Gallery until September 5th, 2022.

Photographs via Pace Gallery.