American photographer and author (born 1950)
Linda Ann Wolf (born March 17, 1950) is an American photographer and writer. She was one of the first female rock and roll photographers. She does fine art photography with an emphasis on women and global photojournalism.
Early life and education.
Wolf was born in Los Angeles on March 17, 1950 and grew up in Sherman Oaks, California. Her mother, Barbara Wolf (née Friedman), is a poet and was a fashion model and English literature teacher at Beverly Hills High School. Her father, Joseph Wolf, was a businessman and avid photographer. Linda's interest in photography was born out of her father's passion for photography. He bought her first camera for her when she was a teenager.
Linda Wolf graduated from Hollywood High School in 1968. In 1969, she began dating Sandy Konikoff, the drummer for Jackson Browne. Konikoff invited her to live at Paxton Lodge in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where Elektra Records was recording one of Browne's first albums. There was a darkroom at the studio, and she was inspired by the experience and made a decision to pursue photography professionally.
Wolf's grandfather, Jules Wolf, managed the historic Lincoln Theater, often called the Apollo of the West. From 1970 to 1975, she lived and studied in Provence, France, attending the Institute for American Universities and L'Ecole Experimental Photographic.
Her early photographic work in France focused on people and village life in the Vaucluse Mountains. Next, Wolf attended Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She taught photography through the University of California at Los Angeles Extension and worked as a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Citywide Mural Project.
Rock and roll photography.
1969 – Fanny.
In 1969, Wolf began working at Warner Bros./Reprise Records, where she met the first all-girl rock band to sign with a major record label, Fanny. She became friends with the band and she moved in with the group at Fanny Hill, a mansion on Marmont Lane in Hollywood, where she lived for a year and a half as the band's documentary photographer. Over 80 of Wolf's archival photos of Fanny are presented in the documentary of the band, Fanny: The Right to Rock During her stay, she met Lowell George who started Little Feat and the band members from Little Feat. She photographed them as well.
1970 – Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs &amp; Englishmen tour.
Wolf met Joe Cocker a week before the Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs &amp; Englishmen tour began. He had just arrived in the U.S. and was staying with his roadie and keyboard player at Leon Russell's house. His record label informed him that he was to start a U.S. tour in six days, but he had just recently left his band, The Grease Band. Russell offered to quickly assemble a touring band and recruited over 40 of his friends. Denny Cordell, who produced the tour, invited Wolf along after seeing her photography. She and Andee Nathanson were the two official photographers for the two-month U.S. concert tour which included Russell, Rita Coolidge, Chris Stainton, Claudia Lennear, Bobby Keys, Pamela Polland, Matthew Moore, and musicians representing the Tulsa Sound including Carl Radle, Jim Keltner, and Chuck Blackwell.
The music documentary "Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs &amp; Englishmen" was released in 1971 and credited Wolf for her tour photography. She wrote "Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs &amp; Englishmen: A Memory Book", which included over 150 new photographs, quotes and stories from alumni. It was released in 2015 at the Lockn' Festival.
On September 11, 2015, Wolf joined the Tedeschi Trucks Band &amp; Friends and alumni from the 1970 Mad Dogs &amp; Englishmen Tour, as the official photographer, and sang in the encore with the Space Choir, for a tribute concert to honor Joe Cocker and the Mad Dogs and Englishmen music. Participating alumni included Leon Russell, Rita Coolidge, Claudia Lennear, Chris Stainton, and Pamela Polland.
Cocker died on December 22, 2014, and Wolf's photographs were used in Associated Press articles written about his life and music legacy.
2020 – "Tribute: Cocker Power".
On April 28, 2020, Insight Editions released "Tribute: Cocker Power", a 335-page coffee table book featuring Wolf's documentary photos, tour alumni stories, and vignettes from the Joe Cocker: Mad Dogs &amp; Englishmen Tour and the 2015 tribute concert at the Lockn' Festival led by the Tedeschi Trucks Band with Leon Russell and original tour alumni. The book, which received favorable reviews, was released on the 50th anniversary of the tour. It includes contributions from over one hundred musicians and crew members, including Denny Cordell, Leon Russell, Chris Stainton, Rita Coolidge, Claudia Lennear, Derek Trucks, Susan Tedeschi, and Warren Haynes.
Public art projects.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Wolf created a public art project of murals consisting of photos of ordinary people sitting on bus benches. The photographs were placed on the sides of buses and the backs of bus benches in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Oakland, California in the U.S., and in Arles, France. The benches were conceived as a response to the dehumanizing effects of advertising; they were exhibited in numerous venues including the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery and the Rencontres International Festival of Photography in Arles. One of the benches sits in the courtyard of Musée Réattu as part of their permanent collection in Arles.
Wolf then developed the project "L.A. Welcomes the World", a series of large-scale multicultural portraits of people presented on billboards throughout Los Angeles, for the 1984 Summer Olympics, which was sponsored by Eastman Kodak.
Collections.
Wolf's photographs are held in the following permanent collections:
References.
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