Oh what an opening party, Oh what a night! Mid February 2012 at The Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley!

Who Shot Rock and Roll, the passionate photography exhibit showcasing Rock Imagery and the Photographers that created it opened with much fanfare to hundreds of visitors on Saturday night.

Oh it will rock you!  Over 175 extraordinary photographs reach beyond the visual and overwhelmingly captivate the senses.  Though the exhibit runs into May, as they say run don’t walk to Who Shot Rock & Roll at the Allentown Art Museum.  It’s for everyone that ever loved music, rock and roll, art, and photography.

There’s a strong fascination to learning the stories behind imagery we grew up with.   Take the cover of Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, made in Northern Ireland in the Giant’s Causeway, by Hipgnosis. Storm Thorgerson was inspired to create the image from a book, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End.  What a tale of creative minds and the highway they travel to develop extraordinary iconic imagery!

Enriching the exhibit experience, some photographs  have QR codes  which offer recordings in the photographers’ voices sharing commentary on image creation.  It’s fascinating listening to the voice of Allen Tannenbaum, discussing how he created the beautiful image, John and Yoko in bed, New York City in 1980.  Undoubtedly moving, but upon viewing the image’s beauty, one is harder hit  knowing that just two weeks after the photograph was made, John Lennon would be dead.

Room after room stunning arrangements of  photographs of all sizes from a polaroid of Courtney Love to those several feet tall of Madonna on stage or Micheal Jackson in mirrors, are poised take our breathe away, reaching deep into the hearts and stirring soulful emotion. Bear witness to the magic of this powerful display and you will most assuredly be able to hear the music play.

Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History 1955 to Present is on view at the Allentown Art Museum of the Lehigh Valley February 11, 2012 – May 13, 2012.

Serving as the exhibition catalogue is a 320-page hardcover book authored by Gail Buckland, titled Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to Present. The book contains 298 color and black and white photographs, along with commentary about each image’s photographer, their influences and relationships with the musicians and how they “saw what they saw and captured what they captured.”Who Shot Rock & Roll is sold in the Museum Store for $40.

[box] Images presented in this article and video slideshow by Terree Yeagle, The Moment Photography[/box]