Flash photography
A dahlia in Bill Wyman’s Suffolk garden
Bill Wyman and I are standing in the Rove gallery, Hoxton, looking at an enlarged photographic print of a young Jerry Hall. Forget the brash, big-haired, long-legged Texan glamour: here she is sitting in profile, soft light coming through sheer curtains, with an otherworldly, meditative quality more usually associated with medieval saints or doomed pre-Raphaelite beauties. Wyman, former bassist with the Rolling Stones, considers it his best portrait: “I don’t get that excited by snaps I’ve taken of my mates but this was one of those times I caught a moment and knew what I had was good.”
“Snaps of my mates” does not quite do justice to the 40 or so rock and roll moments that make up one half of Wyman’s Second Nature exhibition. Here is John Lennon peacefully unaware of Wyman’s lens, Brian Jones reflected through a driver’s mirror, Booker T Washington playing live but viewed from the wings, and Mick Jagger staring at a half-filled glass as if someone is making him drink his own urine. Most have never been exhibited before (though Wyman has had exhibitions of his photography in Monaco, the Netherlands, the US and France), and this is the first time the photographs, which range in price from £1,000- £6,000, have been shown in London – his home town.
Wyman has been fascinated with photography since his Uncle Jack gave him a second-hand camera as a boy – “he came back from National Service with a Leica he had swapped for some cigarettes, so he gave me his old Brownie” – and Wyman would walk the streets of Penge, Beckenham and Sydenham taking pictures of churches, park gates, old almshouses and anything else that caught his eye. Sadly, his mum ditched both the camera and his early attempts at the art form when he was drafted to do National Service. By the time he got another camera, it was 1966 and he had been a Rolling Stone for four years. Many of the portraits in Second Nature stem from that year and the Stones tour of Australia. Here is a butter-wouldn’t-melt Keith Richards on the tour bus and an equally non-jaded Jagger.
Of course, the other Stones bought cameras too but, as Wyman says, he was the only one that took it seriously. “It wore off with the others – we all had movie cameras too but that died off as well.” Originally,he took his “snaps” to illustrate his diaries (Wyman has been an avid diary keeper from his youth), but he was interested enough to learn how to develop his own film.
Mick Jagger in Canada (1975)
What is more surprising in Second Nature is the other half of the exhibition: Wyman’s fascination with landscape and nature. Here are misty and poetical recordings of Britain, France, the Netherlands, the US, even the Arctic Circle. Some are so lyrical, they are reminiscent of the haunting landscapes of Andrew Wyeth. At first glance, you might think that Wyman has embraced colour filters or some other manipulation of light but he is adamant that what you see is what he saw – nature in all its finery, boldness and razzmatazz. He has an eye both for the big picture – witness the flooded fields in the Netherlands or the flaming skies of southern France – but also for detail. It is possible to trace the hairs down the back of a dragonfly or pick out every tiny petal in a dahlia that burns like a Catherine wheel. His image of the humble apple blossom is extraordinary – an Old Master in which light is captured Rembrandt-like just as the day fades.
For Wyman, these are the pictures that count – and you can see why. They don’t come from living an extraordinary life and having the fortune to snap the shutter on some famous people but from making the ordinary become extraordinary. Almost 75, he has lost none of his passion and enthusiasm for the pastime either. Right now, he is putting together a series of impromptu taxi driver portraits, which capture the life of London around them. He says he has turned digital – “had to, my eyesight isn’t what it was” – and that his camera travels with him always.
Ironically, Wyman rarely photographs his children – “I leave that to [my wife] Suzanne” – but the portraits he most enjoys taking are ones where the subject is barely aware of his presence. Witness the one of an elderly and smiling Marc Chagall, his wife Bella’s head resting on his shoulder. It is an intimate and moving moment. As Wyman says: “There is a lot of love in that picture. I can look at it over and over again.”
‘Second Nature: The Photographs of Bill Wyman’ is at Rove, Hoxton Square, London N1, until November 30, rovetv.net
