Paris-based Claude Gassian has been shooting the legends of rock from the early seventies, and is one of France’s best known music photographers.
A love of rock music turned Claude Gassian into a music photographer at the dawn of the seventies. It is to be closer to his passion – whether pressed up against the stage or behind the scenes – that Claude takes up photography. In his early days, he catches the coat-tails of the sixties rock revolution, documenting the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and The Who at the Isle of Wight Festival.
Concert after concert, Claude refines his technique and his photographs start to appear in the music press. The true photographic revelation takes place a few years later, with the emergence of a new generation of groups – more incisive but also more accessible. Along with his very energetic stage photographs, Claude Gassian develops a more intimate work, a very personal style that opens the intimacy of the greatest.
Since then, he has shot virtually every major figure in music, from ageing giants (Chuck Berry, Chet Baker, Miles Davis, John Lee Hooker, James Brown…) to today’s musicians (Jack White, Daft Punk, The Kills, The Queens of the Stone Age…). In between, he photographed the rock Pantheon : Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Patti Smith, The Clash, Nick Cave….
