Photos - Forever Young: Photographs Of Bob Dylan

Saturday February 4, 2006

BOOK REVIEW: Forever Young: Photographs of Bob Dylan Douglas R. Gilbert & Dave Marsh Palgrave Macmillan, $45

As a staff photographer on Look magazine, 21-year-old Douglas Gilbert wrangled himself one sexy assignment. In August 1964, Bob Dylan was still relatively unknown but Gilbert convinced his editors that the young folk singer and songwriter, the writer of Blowin' in the Wind, was shaping up as an artist worthy of a closer look. Gilbert was on the money.

He photographed Dylan for more than a week. Dylan was 23. He'd lost his chub and looked like a cross between Barbra Streisand and an angel. He wore stovepipe pants and Cuban heels but his most iconic accessory was that look of insouciance. Hanging out with his musician friend John Sebastian in Woodstock; rapping with Allen Ginsberg; drinking in Greenwich Village or singing at Newport Folk Festival, Dylan sometimes looks shy or tired or serious, but mostly he looks cool.

He is often photographed with groups of friends but, whether consciously or unconsciously, they defer to him. Even the children of his friends know this guy is special. As Sebastian observes in the book: "All of a sudden this secondary spirit jumped out of him . . . things changed, really fast transformation was occurring." In essence this is what we see in the photos: a young man shaking his wings.

Ironically, Look decided to kill the photos on the basis that Dylan looked too scruffy; Jackie Kennedy and her pillbox hats were more to their liking. Some 40 years on, this is the first time these absorbing black-and-white photographs have been published.