Jefferson Airplane, NYC, 1968
Cover of Life MagazineArt Kane pioneered the art of conceptual portraiture. He didn’t photograph artists doing theirthing, he photographed them doing HIS thing. Kane summed up his approach to photographywith this statement: “Performance shots are a waste of time, they look like everyone else’s. Ifyou want to shoot a performer, then grab them, own them, you have to own people, then twistthem into what you want to say about them.” Like all his subjects, he immersed himself in theirmusic to develop his concept. In the case of Jefferson Airplane, he saw flight as a definingprinciple of their approach. He designed the plexiglass cubes to stack the band in to create theillusion of flying, and also to reference the visual metaphor of acid rock with these large sugarcubes of acid. The plexi cubes cost $3000 to make, a fortune for an editorial shoot in 1968, butKane was able to command it. The photograph was taken in Queens, NYC, just south of the59th street bridge and across the East river from the United Nations, at a gypsum factory thatlends a bizarre and almost lunar landscape.
Original Photograph Printed Directly from the Original Negative.
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- Jefferson Airplane
- Rock
- Jack Cassidy
- Marty Balin
- Art Kane
- Folk Rock
