Jim Marshall 1936-2010

Grace Slick
(all images are from Trust: Photographs of Jim Marshall)

“I love all the musicians – they’re like family. Looking back I realize I was there at the beginning of something special, I’m like a historian. There’s an honesty about this work that I’m proud of. It feels good to think, my God, I really captured something amazing.”

- Jim Marshall

Miles Davis

The Art, Music and Recreation department is pleased to present “Jim Marshall 1936-2010”, a wall-case display highlighting some of the iconic images photographed by Jim Marshall of local and national musicians. The display includes his photographs of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles at their last concert, Miles Davis, Shel Silversteen, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, and Stevie Wonder.

Jimi Hendrix

Jim Marshall was born in Chicago in 1936 but his family moved to San Francisco when he was only 2. He played with a Brownie camera as a child and bought his first Leica in high school. When he came back from the serving in the Air Force Marshall met John Coltrane. Once, while he was photographing backstage at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco in 1960, a musician asked him for directions to Berkeley. The musician was John Coltrane. "He asked me for directions to a club," Marshall said later. "I told him I'd pick him up and take him there if he'd let me take his picture." Jim Marshall went on to photograph and forge lasting friendships with many of the greats of jazz and rock n’ roll. He died earlier this year on March 24th, 2010.

Janis Joplin

His images can be seen in the following books, available at the San Francisco Public Library:


Jim Marshall: Jazz by Jim Marshall; introduction by Philip Elwood (Chronicle Books, 2005).

Match Prints by Jim Marshall and Timothy White; introduction by Anthony DeCurtis (Collins Design, 2010).

Tomorrow Never Knows: The Beatles' Last Concert / by Eric Lefcowitz; with photos by Jim Marshall (Terra Firm, 1978).

Trust: Photographs Of Jim Marshall (Omnibus Press, 2009).

Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 To The Present by Gail Buckland (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009).