On Friday, the Govinda Gallery in Georgetown opened their newest exhibition: "Ken Regan: Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review."
In 1975, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Review, a ragtag bunch of famous people came together to tour the northeast in what Dylan envisioned as a "traveling gypsy circus." But with the likes of Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, Allen Ginsberg and Joni Mitchell, to name a few, the tour seems now more like a folk pantheon rather than a gypsy circus.
Regan, who boasts a lengthy resume that includes photos for Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated, served as the tour's exclusive photographer. He took some 13,750 shots (only 50 are displayed in this exhibition) over the course of the caravan up the northeast of the U.S. He captured sides of Dylan that few, if any, have before or since.
"You have a picture of him smiling! I've never seen him smile before," said one exhibition-goer.
True, most of the photos of Dylan seem to portray him as a pained poet, always in the deep confines of his own creative mind, unable to shed his dramatic poses - with exceptions, of course.
But this exhibition gives a special insight into the man. When you spend every waking hour with someone, he tends to open up. There is a shot of Dylan hanging out of the window of his Winnebago, giving a thumbs up with a wild grin; Dylan in a mirror intensely applying the white clown paint which became the tour trademark. There are shots in the recording studio, presumably taken while recording tracks for his 1976 album "Desire," Dylan deep in thought or just playing around; Dylan standing bored at a payphone with his pet beagle.
There are very interesting photos of Dylan meeting various people, most notably Bruce Springsteen and Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. In the photograph with the former, it looks like a joke had just been cracked and the two were awkwardly laughing it off, not sure what to do in each other's presence. The photograph with the latter is particularly interesting. Carter, the former middleweight boxer imprisoned for triple murder, was the subject of Dylan's song "Hurricane." To see the two meet through prison bars, even in a photograph, is truly remarkable. Both have done much for the other in their own way.
Some highlights of the show include a series documenting a sort of bohemian picnic on the shores of Newport, R.I. Everyone on the tour is gathered, skipping down the shore, with tambourines and guitars, led by Dylan blowing madly into a bugle. Another series shows Dylan and Ginsberg at author Jack Kerouac's grave in Lowell, Mass. They laugh, joke and play guitar over the grave. They're portrayed as friends keeping the old boy company, and paying a visit just as if he were still around, the way he would've liked it.
This is why the exhibition is so interesting - it's the meeting of such giants of literature, art, and music. All of these people have such distinct personas of their own, and we have expectations of them as well. But when they come together, it's a little like seeing your teacher in the grocery store. They become not the dramatic figures we think them to be, but friends sharing laughs and good times with each other.
A favorite shot of the exhibition is of Dylan and Ginsberg in a playground across from Kerouac's cemetery.
"We'd just gotten off the bus, and there was this play ground," Regan said. "And all of a sudden all these kids came out. Of course, they didn't know who these guys were, and you know how kids get with cameras."
The effect is incredible. A group of elementary-age kids, oblivious to who is in their midst, are seen surrounding the two aging geniuses. It's almost as if the youthful spirits of the two poets took human forms and followed them wherever they went.
The exhibition, which runs until Feb. 26, is a must-see for any Dylan fan.
