Bobbi Bennett’s Stoked Malibu Gallery at Third Space opens exhibit featuring rock stars, actors and fashion icons
“Wow!” one attendee exclaimed as she entered Stoked Malibu Gallery’s October 19 reception at Third Space celebrating the opening of “Rockstar” — featuring the images of iconic photographer Guy Webster, an exhibit showcasing the famed album cover photographer’s stunning works capturing what Henri Cartier-Bresson called “le moment qui se sauve” — the unrehearsed reality — of emerging rockstars, actors and fashion icons in the transformative and tumultuous ’60s and ’70s and beyond.
“Look! Bob Dylan! Cher! The Mamas and the Papas! The Stones!” attendees said, enjoying convivial colloquy about the album covers and the songs they remember by those iconic artists.
An exhibit featuring Webster’s work is, as Galen Cruz De La Cruz quipped, not to be missed.
“I had to come see Guy Webster! Period! I’m in music and he is The Man!” he said, leaning intently to view various works, and then adding reverently, “Look at those images of Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison — they are magnetic!”
Webster brilliantly captured images seen on album covers like the Doors’ 1967 eponymous LP, Simon & Garfunkel’s”Sounds of Silence” and the Byrds’ “Turn! Turn! Turn!” “His photos served as a gateway to the sounds of the ’60s and early ’70s,” The Los Angeles Times said in its obituarial article honoring him. He lived in Ojai for much of his life and passed away there in 2019.
Collector Andre Nikolas and his companion, Lisa Henley, carefully examined several of the photographs, exploring all their features in detail. Features such as the composition, the time of day the image was shot, and the venues where Webster beautifully captured the essence of each of his often mercurial subjects.
“I own several pieces of Webster’s work. I’m so delighted to see the image of Bob Dylan!” Nikolas said, remarking about a candid portrait of Dylan that Harvey Kubernik, Webster’s biographer, aptly stated,“caught the singer in his early success, enveloped in a nimbus of joy before the weight of his genius would seal him off from the reach of the public, and captured the lightness of such a guarded being that borders on the extraordinary.”
In the ’60s and ’70s, album covers were an integral part of an album. “You’d cradle the cover, read the notes on the sleeve, and listen to the music,” Kuberik said. “Webster’s images captured the music — they were part of the music.”
In his laudatory forward for “Big Shots — The Photography of Guy Webster,” written by Kubernik and his brother Kenneth, Brian Wilson wrote about Webster’s uncanny ability to be omnipresent as the band practiced and played. Yet, Webster emphasized, Webster was never intrusive. “Guy knew about the creative “moment” and knew when to snap,” Wilson said. “I am so glad Guy was there to document our making of history.”
Reception attendees delighted in the details of images of Janis Joplin, looking, as Webster described her, quite tentative and shy; The Doors’ Jim Morrison; and a color photograph of the Rolling Stones at Griffith Park from the Rolling Stones’ Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass) photo shoot. Many giggled at Webster’s image of all the Mamas & the Papas frolicking in a swimming pool in a photo that became the album cover shot for their third album, “Deliver.”
Webster’s daughter, Merry Webster, gazed around the well attended reception and chatted with The Malibu Times about her dad, providing a few details about how he gained access to some special moments experienced by his subjects — moments he brilliantly captured.
“He was staying with the Mamas and the Papas when he captured the image of them in the pool,” Merry said. “They were all just having fun. He stayed with the Beach Boys for a time also.”
Bridging the years — how Bennett helped Webster’s “last hurrah”
Merry also discussed how her dad mentored Malibuite Bobbi Bennett, the gallerist who curated the exhibit.
“Bobbi’s hanging of the exhibit is beautiful,” Merry exclaimed. ”She really helped my Dad in his later years and helped to encourage him to show his work as a last hurrah — she helped draw him out so he could talk with people about his photographs, which he loved to do.”
When asked about whether her dad shared any funny stories about some of the images he shot, his life in the wild times in the rock era, and his remarks concerning photographic techniques, Merry discreetly began responding by noting, “I know given the era that when he shot many of the images, there was a lot of drug use and that did paint some of his experiences!”
With regard to her dad’s favorite photographic techniques, she said, “He liked to work with the lighting of the photograph — he said that his greatest influences included Caravaggio.”
Glancing around the exhibit one observes that such influences are palpable, as Webster’s photographs often evoke chiaroscuro-like effects that portray depth through slow gradations of light and shadow, an effect Webster once noted was very tricky in the world of black and white photography.
“I never meant to be a commercial photographer; I was going to be a fine-art photographer,” Webster once said. “And then life intervened. My old friend Terry Melcher called. He was a record producer at that point and his act, The Rip Chords, needed an album cover for their ‘Three Window Coupe’ LP. I was still in school, but suddenly the future came crashing into me. Shooting album covers brought together my two loves: music and photography. It was serendipity …and the ’60s were calling.”
Webster’s intriguing images are calling all who were fans, and they can be viewed through Nov. 17 at Stoked Malibu Gallery located in Third Space Malibu at 23357 Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu Village.
