MEG SHIFFLER
Black musicians still had to fight to perform in venues in non-black neighborhoods, even though the black and white locals of the American Federation of Musicians had merged. North Beach, San Francisco, 1960.
WHEN HISTORIANS CONSIDER JIM MARSHALL, it is as both a master documentary photographer intent on capturing concerts, musicians, and audiences over a fifty-year period and as a photojournalist on assignment to illustrate particular stories. But Marshall’s work also included capturing events associated with civic and social movements that changed the course of American history. Marshall’s early work illuminates how he honed the technical skills and unique visual storytelling that define his iconic portfolio.
Working with the Jim Marshall estate to curate the 2017 exhibition Jim Marshall’s 1967, I took a deep dive into the five hundred thousand–plus image archive and discovered both the breadth of his practice as well as the consistency of his aesthetic. The earliest images in the archive, taken by Marshall as a teenager in San Francisco, feature young women at Bay Area drag races, presaging his lifelong interest in beauty, fast cars, and American subcultures. After Marshall was honorably discharged from the Air Force in 1959, he moved into his mother’s house in the Fillmore neighborhood of San Francisco, bought his first Leica camera, and started his life as a photographer in earnest.
During the day, Marshall photographed life on the streets and in cafés across the Bay Area, and developed his extraordinary ability to shoot his subjects using only available light sources, a technical choice he was devoted to throughout his career. In these early candid shots, he focused mostly on people rather than architecture or landscape, placing his subjects at the forefront or midframe so that facial expressions and small gestures take center stage.
Street photographers are anonymous to their subjects, but they are not always unseen. In some of Marshall’s most successful images from this time period, individuals catch him in the act of pointing his lens their way. In a particularly masterful image from 1960, Marshall is very close to a couple outside a ravioli factory in the Italian neighborhood of North Beach. The woman is unconcerned or unaware of the camera, but the man brings a cigarette to the corner of his mouth, turns toward the lens, and raises one inquisitive eyebrow at Marshall just as the shutter clicks. Dramatic late-afternoon light, a charming setting complete with an unaware passerby, a vaguely mysterious and handsome couple, and high black-and-white contrast make this shot absolutely cinematic in scope.
The Fillmore District in San Francisco, 1961
In 1961, Marshall captured a woman standing in front of a mirror attached to a column on Fillmore Street. She has set her bag down and is squeezing cream onto her hand. Just before the shot is captured, she sees the photographer reflected in the mirror. Her eyes shift, her mouth parts, and she is caught mid-thought and mid-action in a moment of vulnerability. There is a lot going on in this photograph—buildings, advertisements, cars, foot traffic, reflections—but the eyes of Marshall’s knowing subject draw viewers into the very center of the frame, and everything else becomes secondary.
Magazines and newspapers often licensed images like these to accompany articles and advertisements. However, Marshall compulsively shot life around him regardless of any intended commercial use. In the archive, contact sheets of early street photography illustrate a preternatural ability to identify a subject, find the light, compose the shot, and frame a complex narrative on the spot.
When the sun went down, Marshall photographed Beat poets and folk musicians performing their latest works in bars and smoky coffeehouses, stand-up comedians at small venues across San Francisco, and jazz musicians gigging in North Beach and the Fillmore District. He was at home in these venues, bastions that welcomed racially and economically diverse performers and enthusiasts. Marshall partied hard, and he nurtured a public persona often described as loud, stubborn, aggressive, blunt, and rude. Those who worked to scratch the surface, however, encountered his generosity, humor, kindness, and absolute devotion to individuals he respected. Performers, and musicians in particular, gave him both onstage and offstage access. They trusted that he would deliver images full of compassion and admiration, and never release unflattering shots to the public. In a 2007 interview, Marshall explained, “You want to become accepted, like as a member of the band, only your instrument is the camera.” While in San Francisco from 1959 to 1962, he established what would become lifelong relationships with some of the most influential musicians of the day, including John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
As his street photography demonstrates, Marshall liked to be close to his subjects, so he most frequently shot performances either onstage or from the front row. In his 1961 portrait of blues singer Estelle “Mama” Yancey, viewers are positioned to gaze up at her from an extreme angle that emphasizes both the pain and the power inherent in her artistry. She is not looking at the camera or the audience. Instead, her eyes are closed, and the venue lights are reflected in her glasses, giving her an otherworldly quality. This is not simply a performance document; it is an insistent call for the respect and adoration of a legend.
In contrast to the emotional image of Yancey, Marshall’s 1960 portrait of John Coltrane, shot during an interview at music critic Ralph Gleason’s house in Berkeley, is quiet and gentle. Coltrane’s eyes appear unfocused, his thoughts turned inward, as light through a window softly kisses his raised hand. This career-changing shot perfectly balances on the line between being so intimate it’s almost uncomfortable to look at and so revealing that one can’t look away. It also shifts our perception of an industry giant renowned for his intense, laser-sharp onstage focus by providing a view of an unguarded Coltrane at rest. These are the type of photographs that put Marshall on the map; they reflect his confident skill as well as his deep respect for artists and his commitment to representing them with vision and integrity.
Gospel Concert, Riker’s Island, New York, 1963
MAMA YANCEY at a club in North Beach, San Francisco, 1961. This image was later used as the cover for the album Mama Yancey Sings, Art Hodes Plays Blues, 1965.
Local recording labels began to license Marshall’s work for promotions and album covers, and he sought ways to further expand his growing business. He quickly became recognized as part of a network of Bay Area photographers covering the jazz scene, including Steve Jackson, David Johnson, Ricardo Alvarado, and most influentially, Jerry Stoll. A fixture at jazz clubs, Stoll was also the Monterey Jazz Festival’s resident photographer for eight years, beginning at its inception in 1958. Stoll became a mentor to Marshall, teaching him some of the practical aspects of running a business, like organizing his studio and developing a system to catalog negatives. With increasing professional drive, and the support of Stoll, Marshall photographed the 1960 Monterey Jazz Festival, capturing iconic onstage and offstage images of Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Miriam Makeba, Jimmy Witherspoon, Odetta, Duke Ellington, Helen Humes, and more. The resulting portfolio shows Marshall fine-tuning some of the strategies he shot with for the rest of his life: depicting performers onstage lost in moments of passion and deep concentration, marking space and time by photographing venue details and diverse audience members, and, most notably, getting up close and personal with performers offstage. Marshall went on to shoot the Monterey Jazz Festival five more times, as well as the 1962 Newport Jazz Festival, the 1967 Monterey International Pop Music Festival, and Woodstock in 1969.
Marshall moved his studio to New York’s Greenwich Village in late 1962, with a desire to make his name known outside of the Bay Area. With very few connections, he relied on professional references from West Coast promoters and publishers, as well as musicians making recommendations to other artists. Doors opened quickly as soon as prospective employers saw the quality of his work. The year 1963 became one of the busiest of his career. He had regular assignments from national publications, including the Saturday Evening Post and Look, and major record labels such as Capitol, Columbia, and Blue Note. He continued to shoot emerging and established jazz musicians at both dive bars and major venues, and he also established enduring professional relationships with folk superstars, including the Mamas and the Papas, Bob Dylan, Hedy West, and Judy Collins. Portraits of writers, directors, and actors, from Broadway and film, were a lucrative and frequent part of his workload. When Marshall wasn’t on assignment, he would pitch photo essays to publications. For one such story, pitched to Look, he shot a dozen contact sheets of Woody Allen performing stand-up.
Girl in Hazard, Kentucky, 1963
In the middle of this productive year, Marshall was sent to Hazard, Kentucky, to document the daily challenges of living in poverty in America. It was an atypical assignment, but it is easy to understand why Marshall committed to it. He was twenty-seven in 1963, and before moving to New York, he had spent most of his life in his mother’s house. He had a difficult upbringing tinged with financial and personal hardships. His parents were immigrants from Iran and Armenia; his mother worked in a laundry; and his father, a house painter, left when he was a boy. Marshall felt like an outsider and moved through the world with a hardened exterior, often numbing himself in order to cope. This assignment invited him to tell a story that must have resonated.
While in Hazard, Marshall lived with and photographed an extremely poor coal-mining family and members of their community. The images are heartbreakingly truthful, but do not cross over into dissecting or exploiting human suffering. Depicting trauma was never part of Marshall’s agenda with this shoot or any other in his career. The portraits are framed with incredible sensitivity, and every man, woman, and child is afforded the same dignity as all of Marshall’s subjects. Soft light from a window casts a halo around a seated matriarch. A father affectionately holds his children, and his half smile and friendly eyes are welcoming. An exhausted mother shares the frame with two of her children in a tableau that is both raw and beautiful. The journalist assigned to the story never visited Hazard, and ultimately Marshall was not pleased with the way the community and its residents were represented in the text, so he never released his photographs to the publication.
Coal-mining family, Hazard, Kentucky, 1963
Tackling a variety of assignments, including Hazard, helped Marshall hone a personal aesthetic and point of view, while solidifying professional parameters that defined what he would and would not do. He would get as close as his subjects allowed, and he would never compromise his integrity or their dignity. He would retain ownership of his images and would not be bullied by gatekeepers. His work would be honest and would not be sensational. He would be wholly and completely himself, for better or worse, and would not put on airs for anyone. He would aggressively push for what he wanted, and he would be loyal to those who supported him along the way. He would acknowledge and sometimes embrace darkness in his life and in the world, yet he would work tirelessly to frame and nurture beauty in every shot. Works from Marshall’s early years mix seamlessly with those he created later. Together, they form an archive that informs and illuminates sociopolitical and cultural history as well as everyday life over a fifty-year span.
“Preacher” parked near Bridgeway and El Portal in Sausalito, California, 1961
Three little kids on a park bench in Sausalito, 1962
Man outside a liquor store in Oakland, California, 1962
Woman’s reflection in a bar mirror on Powell Street in San Francisco, 1962
Outside the Coffee Gallery Jazz Club in North Beach, San Francisco, 1960
Taking a stroll in Sausalito, 1962
JIM MARSHALL, 1962
Lunch counter in Sausalito, California, 1962
“WINNING THE PEACE IS A LONELY BATTLE.” Market Street, San Francisco, 1961
PETER, PAUL, AND MARY performing in New York City, 1963
ANITA O’DAY was known for shattering the image of “the girl singer.” She left a broken home at fourteen and cultivated a tough, cool, jazz hipster image, which was at the time quite unique and risky. Known for her rhythmic, edgy style, O’Day went on to sing with the Gene Krupa, Woody Herman, and Stan Kenton big bands to much fanfare before going solo. Despite the signature white gloves and late-1960s heroin addiction (which she managed to kick), O’Day was considered indestructible.
A group of older gentlemen sitting on the sidelines observing a “Hands Off Cuba” protest in Union Square, San Francisco, 1960
Soldier at pinball machines in Mike’s Pool Hall in North Beach, San Francisco, 1961
Dancer at a Ray Charles concert at the Oakland Auditorium Arena, Oakland, California, 1961
Woman listening to Ray Charles play at Longshoreman’s Hall in San Francisco, 1961
Marshall traveled with the RAY CHARLES BAND on and off from 1960 to 1963. This photo was taken in New York City in 1963. Opposite is the full proof sheet.
Ray Charles concert poster at Longshoreman’s Hall, San Francisco, 1961
Woman at a North Beach Festival in San Francisco, 1961
BOB DYLAN and PETE SEEGER backstage at the Village Gate, New York City, 1962
THELONIOUS MONK backstage at the Monterey Jazz Festival, Monterey, California, 1964. A colorized version of this image was used as an album cover.
DICK GREGORY performing at the hungry i nightclub, which played a big role in the history of stand-up comedy. Dick Gregory was the first black comedian to successfully cross over to white audiences. North Beach, San Francisco, 1961.
MAVIS STAPLES recording session in Chicago, 1963
A blind man asking for help to get a security dog in the subway, New York City, 1963
New York City, 1962
BOB DYLAN in a Greenwich Village café, New York City, 1963
You can’t talk about BOB DYLAN’s early career without acknowledging JOAN BAEZ’s catalytic effect on his work, his outlook, and his emotions. They met at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village in 1961. The twenty-year-old Baez was already a big star on the folk scene; Dylan, the same age, was just a compelling wannabe.
But the erudite Baez, already considered the “Queen of Folk,” seems to have immediately recognized his unique gifts as a lyricist and was, by all accounts, extraordinarily generous in opening doors, recording his songs, and letting Dylan perform with her. It wasn’t long before Joan and Bob were romantically involved. The Queen now had a King.
Marshall had his own lifelong love affair with Baez (uncon- summated). If you want still images of this mutual admiration society, look no further than these lovely fly-on-the-wall images of Baez and Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963.
Woman in the audience at “The Greatest Gospel Event in History,” held in Randall’s Island Stadium, New York City, 1963
Couple kissing in front of Village Pain Shop in Greenwich Village, New York City, 1963
Riding the Broadway Local, New York City, 1963
Restaurant in Harlem, New York City, 1963
JOHN COLTRANE listening to playback at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio for Impulse Records, New York City, 1963
The streets of New York City, 1963: a little boy playing with a toy gun
The streets of New York City, 1963: a man outside the Judson Church Community Center
“Warren Commission Report On Sale Here,” New York City, 1964
Little boy playing with a gun, New York City, 1963
Outside a recording studio in New York City, 1964
The streets of New York City, 1963: a proof sheet that also captured a very young JIM MARSHALL
The streets of New York City, 1963: Marshall was always fascinated with children and capturing their playful moments.
“Times Square Track 4,” New York City, 1963
New York City, 1963
Cadet getting his portrait drawn in New York City, 1963
BOB DYLAN in a Greenwich Village café, New York City, 1962
Marshall took this shot very, very early in his career, backstage at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. He always said it was one of his absolute favorites. It was one of his first rolls of film during his first time in New York City. He probably wasn’t on assignment but rather just roaming around, doing his Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, W. Eugene Smith street photographer thing. And he was likely paying for the film out of his own pocket. You can see how economical he is with his shot selection and also how many other amazing shots there were on just that one roll.
MAHALIA JACKSON performing at Carnegie Hall in New York City, circa 1960
NINA SIMONE in New York City, circa 1960
