Black Lives Matter and rock photo exhibits open at Sonoma gallery

Scott Nichols Gallery is hosting an exhibition of photographs reflecting the people, conditions and defining moments of the Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter movements. Spanning the 1950s to the present, the show features such prints as “Colored Area Only,” an evocative work from photographer W. Eugene Smith’s Nurse-Midwife photographic essay. Published in Life magazine on Dec. 3, 1951, the series chronicled the heroic efforts of Maude Caullen, an African-American nurse-midwife in North Carolina.

Also included in the show is Civil Rights-era activist and documentary photographer Frank Espada’s 1964 portrait of Malcolm X, New York and Michael Zagaris’ historic photograph of Colin Kaepernick “taking a knee” at a San Francisco 49ers football game in 2016.

Additional artists featured in Black Lives Matter are Chester Higgins, Jr., Dave Heath, Danny Lyon, Marc Riboud, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Margo Davis.

A concurrent show takes a musical trip from 1960s Greenwich Village to 1980s San Francisco. The exhibition, “It’s Only Rock & Roll,” includes an iconic 1971 portrait of the Grateful Dead by Bob Seideman. Michael Zagaris appears again in this show with his 1976 photograph, “The Last Note, The Who, Winterland, San Francisco,” capturing the quintessential rock concert moment of Pete Townsend flinging his guitar through the air.

Also included in the show is Jim Marshall, chief photographer at Woodstock, and his 1963 image of “Bob Dylan with Tire in Greenwich Village.” Also included in the show are works by Herb Greene, Linda McCartney, Ebet Roberts, Baron Wolman, Elliott Landy, Brad Temkin, William Coupon, Scott Palmer, Andy Freebert, Johnny Ace and others. Another rock-photography exhibit opened at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art on July 1.

Based in the West Coast since 1980, the Scott Nichols Gallery relocated to the Sonoma Plaza from its former home in San Francisco’s 49 Geary St. building in 2019.

Contact Lorna at lorna.sheridan@sonomanews.com.