By ALLAN KOZINN
New York Times
The Morrison Hotel Gallery, which specializes in music photography – not only photographs of musicians, but also photography by musicians – will present a show of self-portraits by Stevie Nicks from between 1975 and 1987. The pictures for the show were selected by Dave Stewart, the Eurythmics guitarist, who co-produced her “In Your Dreams” album.
The show, called “24 K Gold” – also the name of Ms. Nicks’s new album (a version of which will come with a book of Ms. Nicks’s photographs) – is devoted entirely to selfies taken in the wee hours of the night, both at home and on tour, using Polaroid cameras.
Why self-portraits?
“I wanted to learn how to become a photographer,” Ms. Nicks said in comments forwarded by her spokeswoman, Liz Rosenberg. “And I don’t sleep at night, so I thought, who am I going to ask to stay up all night, and then do a show tomorrow? So I’m not going to get Christine,” she said, referring to Christine McVie, her colleague in Fleetwood Mac. “She’s going to say, ‘Are you crazy? I’m going to the bar. Bye.’”
In search of variety, Ms. Nicks used props and costumes, often tinkering with lighting and placement through the night. “I did everything,” she said. “I was the stylist, the makeup artist, the furniture mover, the lighting director — it was my joy. I was the model.”
She continued taking self-portraits for more than a decade, until, as she put it, “the Polaroids were just almost impossible to use, because there was just no more film and they all broke down.”
The pictures have not been exhibited before. Mostly, Ms. Nicks said, they were stored in shoe boxes, where she filed them soon after taking them.
The exhibition will be at 201 Mulberry Street on Oct. 10 and 11, and will move to the Morrison Hotel Gallery at 116 Prince Street on Oct. 13, where it will run for the rest of October.
The exhibit will also be displayed in Los Angeles from October 10th through 21st at the Morrison Hotel Gallery @ Sunset Marquis Hotel
NYC Exhibition
October 10th & 11th, 2014
Morrison Hotel Gallery @ 201 Mulberry Street
11am - 7 pm
October 12th - 31st, 2014
Morrison Hotel Gallery SoHo, NYC @ 116 Prince Street, Second Floor
M-Sat: 11-7pm
Sunday: 12-6pm
LA Exhibition
October 10-21, 2014
Morrison Hotel Gallery @ Sunset Marquis Hotel
1200 Alta Loma Road
West Hollywood, CA 90069
M-Wed: 11am - 8pm
Thu-Sat: 10am - 11pm
Sun: 11am - 7pm
PURCHASE ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINTS HAND SIGNED/NUMBERED BY STEVIE
Beginning in the mid-seventies, Stevie Nicks took a series of Polaroid self-portraits in her home as well as hotel rooms around the world while on tour. Earlier this year, during the recording of her new solo album 24 Karat Gold - Songs From the Vault, she decided to share these never-before-seen self portraits. Each one of these archival pigment prints is hand-signed and numbered by Stevie Nicks.
"Some people don't sleep at night - I am one of those people. These pictures were taken long after everyone had gone to bed - I would begin after midnight and go until 4 or 5 in the morning. I stopped at sunrise - like a vampire... I never really thought anyone would ever see these pictures, they went into shoeboxes, where they remained. I did everything - I was the stylist, the makeup artist, the furniture mover, the lighting director. It was my joy - I was the model..."
- Stevie Nicks
Morrison Hotel Galler
STEVIE NICKS "24 KARAT GOLD - SONGS FROM THE VAULT"
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"Well, look, everybody loves Stevie Nicks [laughs]. It would be hard to find somebody who doesn’t. The way I had the opportunity to photograph her was pretty amazing. I work with the Foo Fighters a lot and Dave Grohl had done that Sound City documentary [with her], and they were doing some press for that. I got the opportunity to photograph the two of them. And so while we were there I asked if I could do some individual portraits of her as well. We were just trying to keep it really simple. I was shooting for a cover of a magazine so I wanted to make it really about her. And I’ve seen a lot of photographs of her where she’s very theatrical, which is fun: It’s fun to be theatrical and it’s fun to photograph someone who presents themselves that way. This was just an opportunity to be looking more inward instead of being theatrical. There’s something more sort of inward and soft [about the picture]. She’s still just really beautiful and has a great sense of style. What I do recall about that is how thrilled she was when she saw the photographs, as I was shooting the Polaroids as well as shooting digitally. It made me feel good that she was really digging them. And that actually turned into me getting to photograph all of Fleetwood Mac. A couple months later I got a call saying, 'Hey, you want to shoot Fleetwood Mac? Christine McVie is coming back in the band and I have the whole original band.'"
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