Picture above: M.I.A. by Valérie Jodoin Keaton
As a music lover and photographer I love to take pictures of musicians. And of course I’m not the only one. Whether it’s frontstage, backstage, promo-photography, album art, tons of photographers are focused on musicians.
This often results in the well known stage-action picture, caught by one of the ten photographers blocking your view with their zoom-lenses during a concert or the millionth metalband doing the ‘we are so bad ass’-pose promoshoot. But luckily, there are also a lot of music-photographers out there that try and capture a different side of the artist.
Today I would like to share with you…. Valérie Jodoin Keaton.
Being a musician herself, Valérie used her personal contacts to sneak into tour-buses and dressing rooms with her Hasseblad medium format camera, to document artists like M.I.A, Wayne Coyne (Flaming Lips), and Gnarls Barckley just before or after their show. The result is a series of black and white portraits. Some artists isolated, focused and almost unaware of the lens, others exhausted, and fulfilled… A big selection was published last year November in her first book simply named ‘Backstage’. About her work, Valérie says: “I like to get up close, capture the moment. Not action shots. I just wanted their gaze.”
Some pictures are also published on her website. Go to Stories, then choose Backstage.
Here’s a nice article about her book.
A selection of the Backstage portraits was also shown as part of the exhibition ‘Who Shot Rock & Roll’ in the Brooklyn Museum.
Enjoy Valérie’s photo’s!! See you next week…
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