Remembering rock photographer Jim Marshall [Updated]

The morning after the news broke about the death of photographer Jim Marshall, who captured the biggest personalities of rock 'n' roll on film, memories are streaming in. Marshall, 74, apparently died in his sleep Tuesday night in New York City, where a book party was to be held to introduce a new collection of photographs taken by him and celebrity photographer Timothy White.

We'll have a full obituary later by pop music writer Randy Lewis, but for now you can read coverage from Rolling Stone (along with a wonderful gallery), the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal (with a quote from Bruce Springsteen). And the full Associated Press story follows on the jump.

We'll have a photo gallery soon, and you can see more of Marshall's work at the Morrison Hotel Gallery website and the photographer's website.

[Updated 12:05 p.m.: Photo gallery is here:

Photos: Jim Marshall, rock photographer

-- Claire Noland

Photo: Photographer Jim Marshall at his San Francisco home in 2002. Credit: Scott Sommerdorf / Associated Press / San Francisco Chronicle

Jim Marshall, photographer of Woodstock, Cash, Dylan and others, dies at 74 [updated]

Jim Marshall, a photographer known for his iconic images of rock 'n' roll musicians beginning in the early 1960s when he shot Bob Dylan in Greenwich Village and continuing through Woodstock and beyond, has died. He was 74.   

A new book of photographs by Marshall and Timothy White, "Match Prints," was released earlier this month, and a book party had been scheduled for Wednesday evening in New York City. A spokeswoman for the John Varvatos boutique, where the event was scheduled to take place, confirmed Marshall's death.

[updated 3:50 p.m.: According to the Associated Press, Aaron Zych, a manager at the Morrison Hotel Galleries in New York, confirmed Marshall's death on Wednesday. Zych said Marshall apparently died alone in his sleep in his New York City hotel room.]

Marshall gained fame for his photos of such performers as Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix and the Allman Brothers. You can see his work at his website, www.marshallphoto.com.

We'll post more information as it becomes available.

-- Claire Noland

Soviet soldier in historic World War II photograph dies

A Red Army soldier who appears in a historic photograph helping hoist a hammer-and-sickle flag over the Reichstag in Berlin in 1945 has died, officials said in Moscow.

Abdulkhakim Ismailov, 93, died of unspecified causes Tuesday in his native village of Chagar-Otar, the press office of the president of Russia’s southern province of Dagestan said Wednesday.

Ismailov was one of the three Soviet soldiers seen in a photograph taken three days after the fall of Berlin in May 1945. He stands beneath the man holding the flagpole.

The photo became an iconic image of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. It has often been compared with the 1945 Associated Press photograph of U.S. soldiers raising the American flag on Iwo Jima.

The Soviet photographer, Yevgeny Khaldei, said years later that the image was staged, and the flag was sewn from three tablecloths. He said the original hammer-and-sickle flag flown from the Reichstag was shot down by German snipers.

Ismailov was identified in the photograph only in 1996 and was awarded a Hero of Russia medal.

During WWII, he was part of a motorized infantry battalion and was wounded five times. After the war, he served as a chairman of a collective farm and as a Communist Party official.

-- Associated Press

Photo: In this image from May 2, 1945, Red Army soldiers hoist the Soviet flag over Berlin. Abdulkhakim Ismailov, just below the flag bearer, died Tuesday. Credit: Associated Press / ITAR-TASS, Yevgeny Khaldei

Dennis Stock, friend and photographer of James Dean, dies at 81

Dennis Stock, a photographer whose iconic images of James Dean helped seal the actor's legacy after his death in 1955, died Monday in Saratoga, Fla., the Magnum photo agency announced today. He was 81.

Stock shot Dean during the filming of "Rebel Without a Cause" and in the actor's hometown of Fairmount, Ind. But his best known photo was of Dean walking in the rain in Times Square.

Stock also documented the hippie lifestyle in the 1960s as well as jazz figures in New Orleans and elsewhere.  

A selection of his photos can be seen at the Magnum website here. Have any favorites? Let us know. Later today we'll have a photo gallery posted at www.latimes.com/obits, along with a full obituary.

-- Claire Noland

Photo: James Dean in New York City, 1955. Credit: Dennis Stock / Magnum

Charis Wilson, Edward Weston's wife and muse

Charis Wilson, the muse, model and last wife of art photographer Edward Weston and the author of several books, including “California and the West,” which she co-wrote with her husband, died Friday in Santa Cruz, according to the New York Times. She was 95.

Charis Wilson (pronounced CARE-ess) took up with Weston when she was 20 and he was 48. She posed for a number of his photographs, many of them nudes, but her involvement with his career went far beyond modeling. Wilson edited articles on photography by Weston and traveled extensively with him for his work

One of the best known photographs he made of her shows her fully dressed in “Charis, Lake Ediza” in 1937. She sits on the ground leaning against rocks wearing pants, a pullover and tall boots. Her head is wrapped in fabric to ward off mosquitoes when traveling and camping outdoors. There is “a look of exhaustion on my face — since identified by critics as ‘sensuality,'” Wilson wrote in her 1998 memoir, “Through Another Lens, My Years With Edward Weston,” co-written with Wendy Madar.

Weston's photos are archived at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles has exhibited some of Weston's nude images of Wilson, including this one.

And a number of the Wilson images are included in “Eloquent Nude, the Love and Legacy of Edward Weston and Charis Wilson,” a 2007 documentary with archival footage and interviews with Wilson, directed by Ian McCluskey.

Update: Mary Rourke's news obituary is here.

-- Claire Noland

They may be dead, but these celebrities are nonetheless making money

It's that time of year, when Forbes magazine releases its annual list of top-earning dead celebrities. You might think Michael Jackson would top the list, since his estate has opened the floodgates with music and a film, "This Is It," to satisfy consumer demand for all things MJ in the wake of his unexpected death in June.

But no, holding on to the No.1 spot is French fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent. Laurent died of brain cancer at age 71 in June 2008. Boosted by the auction of much of his estate at Christie's in February, more than $350 million has been raked in during the last 12 months, Forbes reported.

Coming in No. 2 is the team of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein, the duo responsible for such Broadway and movie musicals as "South Pacific," "The King and I," "The Sound of Music," "Carousel" and "Oklahoma!" Rodgers died in 1979 and Hammerstein in 1960, but they still combined to earn $235 million in the last year.

Then Jackson shows up at No. 3 with $90 million.

The rest of the list, according to Forbes:

4. Elvis Presley, $55 million.

5. J.R.R. Tolkien, $50 million.

6. Charles Schulz, $35 million.

7. John Lennon, $15 million.

8. Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), $15 million.

9. Albert Einstein, $10 million.

10. Michael Crichton, $9 million.

The full Forbes coverage is here.

-- Claire Noland

Photo: Fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent at his London boutique in 1969. Credit: Associated Press

A critic's view of photographer Roy DeCarava

Art photographer Roy DeCarava, known for his black-and-white images of everyday life in Harlem and jazz musicians of the 1940s, '50s and '60s, died Tuesday, Oct. 27, in New York City. He was 89.

In 1996, when a retrospective of DeCarava's work was exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Times art critic Christopher Knight called it "the most important exhibition of photography to have been seen in L.A. this year." Knight goes on to describe the photographer's work:

The earliest pictures show an exquisitely refined sensitivity that is sustained throughout the exhibition, whether DeCarava is photographing the ordinariness of street life in Harlem, friends at home, the greats of New York jazz, humdrum activity in the subway or civil rights demonstrations in the South. His photographic constancy may be a result of his own relative maturity when he began to use the camera in earnest.

The rest of the review is here.

A news obituary written by former Times staff writer Mary Rourke is here.

— Claire Noland

Photo: The 1952 image "Ketchup Bottles, Table and Coat" was included in a 1996 retrospective exhibit of the photographer's work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Credit: Roy DeCarava

Irving Penn, 'Grand Master of American Fashion Photography'

“Photography is a mass medium available to anyone. A few geniuses, like Irving Penn, redeem it,” said Colin Westerbeck, a former photography curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. He spoke to The Times in 2003 for the obituary on Penn that Mary Rourke, who often covered fashion and style for the paper, wrote in advance of his death.

He was “a grand master of American fashion photography,” Rourke wrote, and “one of the first commercial photographers to cross the chasm that separated commercial art and photography.” Some of his most famous photographs — the ad campaign for Clinique that he had worked on since 1968 — were also some of his most anonymous.

Whatever he photographed, he isolated his subject, whether it was a cigarette butt or veiled Moroccan women, and employed an elaborate printing process. Many of his photos became famous and are exhibited in museums; the exhibit in Los Angeles at the J. Paul Getty Museum, “Irving Penn: Small Trades,” runs through Jan. 10.

At Vogue magazine, his career stretched from October 1943 to August 1999, beginning and ending with still-lifes. The first was an austere composition of fashion accessories that made the cover; the last was of blackening banana slices, to illustrate the subtler signs of aging.

To those who worked with the reclusive photographer, he was simply “Penn,” according to a Vogue blog.

Penn, 92, died Oct. 7 in his New York City apartment.

-- Valerie J. Nelson

Left photo: One of Irving Penn's most famous photos for Vogue magazine appeared on the cover in 1950. Credit: Irving Penn/Conde Nast Archive

Right photo: Irving Penn in the 1960s. Credit: Bert Stern/Irving Penn Studio Inc.

Photographer Irving Penn's work is on view in L.A.

Photographer Irving Penn, who died Wednesday in New York City, is featured in a current exhibit at the Getty Museum called "Small Trades."

Museum director Michael Brand issued this statement after the news of Penn's death broke:

"Irving Penn was one of the most influential photographers of our time.

"His iconic images helped define 20th-century photography.

"The news of his death today greatly saddens all of us at the Getty who worked with him in the past, and more recently over the course of putting together the 'Small Trades' exhibition and publication.

"We offer our condolences to his family, and to colleagues at his studio whom we have come to know over the course of the past year.

"Mr. Penn’s death transforms our current exhibition of his work into a poignant testimony of his contribution to the field of photography — one that we are privileged and honored to share with our visitors."

—Claire Noland

Photo: Irving Penn in the 1960s.

Credit: Bert Stern / Irving Penn Studio Inc.