A new collection of exclusive, highly personal photographs of music’s most enduring personages <em>People You’d Like To Know</em>, will be released October 1 by Omnibus Press. Beautifully captured in never-before-seen black and white photos, People You’d Like to Know offers an intimate glance into the working lives of legendary artists from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s including Bob Dylan, David Bowie, John Lee Hooker, Ray Charles, Frank Zappa, Blondie, New York Dolls, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Taj Mahal and Steve Winwood, among many others.
In celebration of the release of <em>People You’d Like To Know</em>, there will be a book launch event at Morrison Hotel in New York City on October 28, where prints from the book will be on display.
Photographer Herb Wise travelled extensively over three decades, attending dozens of music festivals across the country, where he developed palpable camaraderie among musicians. Wise, who learned his craft from friend David Gahr, the revered photographer of American folk music performers, was president of Oak Publications working on books about folk musicians. In order to aid his regular need for musicians’ photos he began travelling with Gahr, who showed him how to shoot and what to look for in a portrait.
In vivid portraits and powerful performance shots, Wise seized moments with some of the best-known artists in the folk, pop, rock, jazz and blues worlds. He manages to capture distinctly personal images of these artists, many of whom were in the very beginnings of their storied careers-a youthful New York Dolls in rare individual portraits and a warmly casual Jackson Browne strumming a guitar backstage as a guest of Joni Mitchell’s at Mariposa ’72. Wise even took captivating shots of lesser-known regional artists like Ann Arbor’s Shaky Jake Woods, whose eccentric style is encapsulated in a close-up photo of his ring-laden fingers and snapshot-covered guitar.
Wise says, "You’d like many of these people. They are good friends, even to know them through a brief glance along the way." This collection transmits that feeling of camaraderie while letting us share Wise’s brief glances into the early working lives of some great musicians of our time.