Clickers & Flickers Photography Network: Bob Seidemann: "Life After Rock & Roll, One Photographer's Struggle to Save His Soul"

LIFE AFTER ROCK & ROLL: ONE PHOTOGRAPHER'S STRUGGLE TO SAVE HIS SOUL
Presented By: BOB SEIDEMANN * Date: August 31, 2010 (Tuesday) * Time: 6:30 - 10 p.m. * Location: The Castaway, 1250 Harvard Road, Burbank, CA 91501 MAP * Reservations: (626) 794-7447 (Required at least 5 days prior to the event)
Bob Seidemann, Graphic Artist and Photographer, is known for the creation of several album covers and portraits of musicians in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1969, Eric Clapton formed a new band and Seidemann was commissioned to create the cover for the album. His photograph of a naked girl with a model airplane he titled “Blind Faith” not only became the cover and title of the album, but the band as well. In 1986 Seidemann began a series of aviation themed photographs referred to as “The Airplane As Art”. From this body of work, 302 photographs sold at Sotheby’s on October 12, 2000 for $236,750. Seidemann’s presentation “Life After Rock & Roll, One Photographer’s Struggle to Save His Soul” at Clickers & Flickers will be in part about his transition from the music business to the Airplane As Art. Sotheby’s catalogue states “This remarkable project to document the 20th-century airplane and its creators began with Bob Seidemann’s interest in abandoned hulks of airplanes in the California desert. Photographs of these abandoned flying machines led to photographs of aircraft in flight; and ultimately to portraits of aviation designers and pilots. What began as a casual project turned into an obsession, as Seidemann tracked down and persuaded the giants of aviations to pose for his camera, from world War II hero General James A. Doolittle to Douglas Dauntless dive-bomber designer Ed Heinemann; from General Chuck Yeager, the first man to break the sound barrier, to Sabura Sakai, the Japanese World War II ace; from Joseph “Joe” Sutter, father of the 747, to the three great Russian aircraft designers of World War II, Radyi Papcovsky, Valery A. Borough, and Victor N. Semenov. Seventy-five of these portraits have been signed by the sitter at least once, and most twice. As whole generations of these pioneers pass on, the original and signed portraits will become impossible to duplicate. Bob Seidemann has written, “The concept for this work sprang from the notion that the airplane is a quintessential manifestation of our humanness, too-making. They are an ancient primal dream made real, to fly. The essence of the original desire to fly was, I believe, aesthetic. All subsequent uses of flying machines are by-products. I look upon the machines themselves as objects of art, a result of the creative process. This is not meant as dogma. It is simply one photographer’s expression, a point of departure for a wonderful odyssey.”
RESERVATIONS AND PAYMENT REQUIRED IN ADVANCE C&F members: $49 at least (5) days in advance. $55 less than 5 days prior to the event. Non members: $59 at least (5) days in advance. $65 at the door, only if space is available.