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I was walking through central London today on my way back to Charing Cross feeling a bit grumpy as one of my colleagues who was supposed to be meeting me didn’t turn up. On my route I passed the National Portrait Gallery and as I did I spotted a poster for an exhibition called  Beatles to Bowie the 60’s exposed. I had heard about this on Radio 4’s Front Row the other week and knew it was a collection of Rock photographs from the 60’s. I really fancied going to see it but the entry fee of £11 put me off. I sighed and walked on…

Just as I was walking away another poster caught my eye, it was for an exhibition called Bob Dylan 1966 tour, Photographs by Barry Feinstein. I thought now this I’ve got to see, how much is it and to my delight it said entry free!

The man on the door directed me downstairs and to the area behind the shop. It was little more than an anteroom between the shop and the toilets and hung around the walls were about 16 images of Dylan taken on his (in)famous 1966 UK tour. There were some I had seen before such as the one that was used on the cover of the No Direction Home DVD but I hadn’t realised that it had been taken in England. It was taken as Dylan waited at the Aust Ferry terminal in Gloucestershire in-between his gigs in Bristol and Cardiff. At that time the ferry was the only way to cross the River Severn as the bridge hadn’t opened yet.

There were others too that I hadn’t seen before. On one wall there were three images which I decided were  my  favourites. Two were taken in Liverpool the third in Sheffield.  The first Liverpool one shows Dylan sitting on the steps of a house surrounded by what could only be described as street urchins. The second showed Dylan standing in a Liverpool street but what made the photograph really effective was the perspective of the houses behind him

The third picture the one taken in Sheffield was a comedy one of Dylan standing in the door of a bookies which had a huge sign in the window saying LSD. After I had seen all the pictures I took a look at the book Real Moments which was for sale in the shop. It had pictures of Dylan from the 1966 tour as well as the 1974 tour of the US with the Band. It looked interesting but I didn’t buy it! I considered the poster but discovered it was £5 so I gave that a miss as well.

I left the Gallery and crossed the road but I hadn’t gone 100 yds before I was stopped in my tracks again. I saw another poster which said Hard Rain which is of course the title of a Bob Dylan song so I took a look and at the bottom of the poster, which was for an outdoor exhibition, it said Lyric by Bob Dylan. I looked around and then spotted it.

Attached to a railing outside St. Martin-in-the-Fields was a line of images. The exhibition consisted of the words of Dylan’s song and for each line there was a corresponding image put together by Mark Edwards. The exhibition was subtitled “Our headlong collision with nature” was was to raise awareness of the effects of pollution and climate change on the world in the run up to the Copenhagen Climate Change summit.

It’s an extremely powerful set of images, some of which are quite harrowing. It works well because Dylan wrote the song at a time of international crisis when the world was on the brink of disaster due to the Cuban Missiles episode. The images which were written about the aftermath of an atomic war hold well for the effects of climate change. Particularly harrowing is the image which accompanies the line

“I met a young child beside a dead pony”

I didn’t photograph that one but here are some of the images from the work along with the relevant lines

Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’,
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’

I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow

There is a book that accompanies this exhibition too – I might have to drop hints for a birthday prezzie. The shop at St. Martin-in-the-Fields is also selling postcards of some of the images which are really good value at 50p each. The website is at www.hardrainproject.com and the exhibition runs until 31st December – Go and check it out or view the images here.

The National Portrait Gallery  Dylan exhibition runs until the 29th November – some of the pictures in the exhibition can be seen in this gallery on the Rolling Stone Magazine website

I strongly recommend both.