Rare photos of Bob Marley go on show at Muswell Hill Gallery

LONDON:

Specially curated photographs of legendary reggae superstar Bob Marley during his early years in London taken by Jamaican film-maker and photographer Esther Anderson will be on show at the Muswell Hill Gallery, Hornsey, London N8, from May 30 to June 19.

The exclusive exhibition, titled ‘Through the Lens of Esther Anderson: Bob Marley: The Early Years’, will feature 20 rare and iconic photographs of the music legend before the start of his worldwide fame in the early 1970s. All were taken by Anderson, who worked with Marley and the Wailers, including Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh, when they came to London to work on their first albums with island Records.

As co-founder of Island Records with Chris Blackwell, Esther Anderson remembers first hearing Bob Marley sing at Compass Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, in 1972. It was unlike anything she had heard before. A visionary artist, Anderson immediately knew that she had found a kindred spirit: someone who shared her love of Rastafarianism, and she sought to shine a light on Bob Marley and the rise of reggae music.

So began a six-year musical and artistic collaboration, which Anderson directed as the Wailers worked on their seminal first albums for Island Records. She organised all the early activities of Bob Marley and The Wailers and was a driving force behind everything they did at that time.

She documented the group in the studio, on the road, and in their everyday lives. The exhibition at the Muswell Hill Gallery is a rare chance for music enthusiasts and art lovers to view and own intimate photographs from this bespoke curated collection.

RADICAL, UNCOMPROMISING PHOTOGRAPHS

Esther Anderson is a pioneering Jamaican film-maker, photographer, and social activist transplanted to London from Highgate, St Mary, in the 1960s whose remarkable photographs reflect her heritage and artistic aspirations.

While mastering a modelling career in London in the late ‘60s, she ventured into acting and landed a starring role alongside legend Sidney Poitier in A Warm December, a romantic drama about a holiday romance in London with a dark secret at its heart. The 1973 film garnered much attention and led Anderson to gain further Hollywood movie credits in The Sandpiper and The Touchables, working alongside greats such as Marlon Brando and Sammy Davis Jnr.

Anderson then went behind the camera as a cinema pioneer, launching her unique kaleidoscopic visions.

A distinctive artistic rebel in the 1970s, Esther Anderson threw herself into the totality of art, music, photography, cinema, political resistance, and with Bob Marley, she reflects these early ideals.

Radical and uncompromising, these photographs display an unwavering commitment to helping spread reggae music and the Rastafarian message of peace and love to a global audience. The series of photographs represent a creative journey in which she as the narrator and director takes the viewer to the Caribbean islands, to Jamaica, and into 56 Hope Road.

Anderson’s stripped-back approach sees her capture several shots of Marley in quick succession, like film storyboards, breaking down one scene into several shots with only a gesture or gaze changes from one photo to the next. The effect is impressionistic and suggests a personality that is hard to pin down, almost restlessly seeking to break the mould of the reggae artiste, the Rastafarian, and the spokesperson for the dispossessed, but ultimately remaining unsettled.

PHOTOGRAPHY AN ART FORM

A world away from the endlessly reproducible iconic images, these works offer a sense of how his fellow Jamaicans and collaborators would have seen Marley as they created, debated, and travelled together. Yet among these personal photographs are some immediately recognisable images, including Marley in his crocheted Rasta cap of yellow, red and green; smoking a spliff; and in another, he stands on the shore of a beach lost in deep thought.

Both powerful and unique, this collection of photographs and subsequent documentary film Bob Marley: The Making Of A Legend are a testament to Esther Anderson’s early vision ahead of Bob Marley and The Wailers’ road to global superstardom as reggae music’s most explosive pioneers.

Her musical documentary, Bob Marley: The Making of a Legend, was chosen to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Jamaica’s Independence and shown at film festivals around the world, including the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the DocMiami International Film Festival, the Festival de Cine Documental de la Cuidad de Mexico, and Jamaica’s Reggae Film Festival. Its London première was held at the British Film Institute on December 17, 2011. Anderson won a UNESCO Honour Award for the film.

Of all her artistic achievements, she lists photography as her favourite as to her, it is now an art form. She said: “People collect photographs as art. I make sure the few images I have of Bob Marley are not watered down as a commercial thing. I keep them as art, so these photographs are for serious collectors.

“The power of an image to inform, to effect change, to distort is endless. It is that power that this image projects out into the world, on to the viewer. Most of these photographs are unseen works that make up the collection which was used to launch the first two albums on island Records, Catch a Fire and Burnin.

That photograph of Bob smoking was the first time anyone had been portrayed in that way as he said he was ‘partaking of the scared sacrament for his meditation. The image became for Island Records a powerful marketing tool, but for the people, an emblem of amnesty and freedom. Long live the power of the image! That’s what the photographs have for me.”

Through the Lens of Esther Anderson: Bob Marley: The Early Years Exhibition runs from Thursday, May 30, to Wednesday, June 19, at Muswell Hill Gallery, 21 High Street, Hornsey, London, N8 7QB.