Jimi Hendrix in Monterey on his knees in front of his burning guitar, conjuring up the flames; Janis Joplin laughing on a couch, his left arm up his hip, a bottle of Southern Comfort in his right hand; Johnny Cash with his rage-distorted face, his right middle finger drawn like a weapon; Jim Morrison with his bare upper body embodying the voluptuous shepherd god Pan as well as the hedonistic worry breaker Dionysos; David Bowie with his face at the pelvis of Mick Ronson, his guitar simulating fellatio; Sid Vicious with a blood-stained chest carved with the words "Gimme A Fix"; Iggy Pop, walking over the heads of his fans - images that capture unique moments, images that initiate careers and manifest images, images you can't get out of your head anymore. The power of the visual is of enormous importance especially in rock music: Like in no other field we equate the image of the artist with his person. And in fact it is this immediacy that the great rock photographers are chasing in order to be able to depict their "motif" larger than life.
eclipsed starts from issue 09/2014 a series of articles in which we introduce the people behind the camera. Those who make visible the dreams that rock musicians sell us. But also those who expose dreams as such and drag the unvarnished into the light. In the first part we give an overview of the history of rock photography, provide portraits of four of its most important protagonists, invite them and other famous colleagues to a round table to introduce us to their way of working, without too much bothering with the secret of the ideal photo, and report on the university project ON STAGE, which will launch a large-scale travelling exhibition on concert photography in September in collaboration with Deutsche Bahn and eclipsed, and interview its initiator - but above all we let these great pictures speak, without which the fascination of rock would not be nearly as captivating as it still is after six decades.
