Bob Dylan poster article
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Bob Dylan – Portrait
By JP Webber, Music on Posters editor.
Actually, this photo would have been taken prior to Dylan’s
rock days, when he was still a ‘folk poet’ back in
Greenwich village in the mid 1960’s. Blowin’ in the
Wind was a song of the times and everyone was bowing down to this
genius of words and music, king of a new generation of people who
wrote and sang their own songs and had something more to say than shang-a-lang or tutti-frutti.
As you’d expect, therefore, this is a rather reverential shot of the man, and just about everything in this shot works to emphasise and highlight the face of our noble poet. The merits of black and white photography can be easily demonstrated here, the black/white/grey contrasts are almost perfect.
The grey, out of focus wall provide just the right background for his head, any darker and you’d lose contrast, any lighter and it would start to make the head over-imposing; the silhouetted microphone stand and music stand, either side of the head provide a frame within the frame of the photo, and at just the right angle to emphasise the way the head is turned; a white shirt balances a black jacket, a white hand intrudes across the black jacket; finally, and most importantly, we have the focal point – the impenetrable dark glasses against his white face, giving a strong air of mystery to our artist – there’s no doubt that we’re looking up at a genius here.
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