The Morrison Hotel Gallery is proud to present Roadwork: The Exhibition, a collection of extraordinary photographs by rock photographer Tom Wright. The exhibit, which opens June 7, 2008 at the Morrison Hotel location at 124 Prince St. in the SoHo area of New York City, is based on Wright’s memoir Roadwork: Rock & Roll Turned Inside Out, which Barnes & Noble Booksellers CEO Steve Riggio called “probably the best book on rock & roll ever published” and Don Carleton, director of the Center for American History, hailed as “a major contribution to the literature of rock and roll.”
Tom Wright was born in Alabama in 1944. In the early 1960s, he studied photography at England’s Ealing Art School, where he met Pete Townshend, founder of the rock group the Who. Wright turned Townshend on to Jimmy Reed, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters and marijuana; Townshend found in Wright a lifelong friend and creative sounding board. “Had I not met Tom Wright,” Townshend muses in his foreword to Roadwork, “the Who would never have become successful.”
Wright became the Who’s official photographer in 1967 and chronicled the group’s development, including their 1989 farewell tour. From 1967 to 1970 he managed the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, Michigan, where the Who’s rock opera Tommy premiered. In addition to his extensive work with the Who, Tom also served as photographer or road manager for the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart and the Faces, the James Gang, J. D. Souther, the Thunderbirds, Elvis Costello, Bob Seger, the Eagles, and others.
Wright’s photographs of rock performers, audiences, and concert venues comprise an intimate, behind-the-scenes history of rock and roll from the 1960s to the 1990s in the United States and Great Britain. Over the years, Tom has allowed limited commercial access to his work. Only an exclusive coterie of musicians, a handful of record company executives, and a few lucky Christie’s auction winners own copies of Wright’s arresting images.
In 1993, Wright’s vast collection of photographic prints, negatives, tapes, phonograph recordings, and correspondence – over 500,000 items, still being unboxed and cataloged – was acquired by the Center for American History on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin.
In 2007, Wright chronicled his journey through three decades and countless lives in Roadwork: Rock & Roll Turned Inside Out. The book was published in North America by Hal Leonard. Omnibus will publish Roadwork in the UK and Australia in early 2009.
The Tom Wright exhibit is comprised of more than 40 images ranging in size from 16″ x 20″ to 30″ x 40″ and includes three stretched canvases. All prints were laser-light printed onto Fuji photo paper and chemically developed and fixed. In addition, eight different Wright-designed 20″ x 30″ show posters in limited editions of twenty-four signed copies will be available.
Wright’s amazing photography can be purchased at all four Morrison Hotel Gallery locations and online at www.morrisonhotelgallery.com.
Founded in 2001 by former record company executive and producer Peter Blachley, former independent record store owner Rich Horowitz and music photographer Henry Diltz, the Morrison Hotel Gallery has grown to become the major brand in fine art music photography.
Morrison Hotel Gallery locations:
124 Prince Street
New York, NY 10012
212-941-8770
313 Bowery
New York, NY 10003
212-677-2253
7517 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90046
323-874-2068
1230 Prospect Street,
La Jolla, CA 92037
858-551-0835
Ann Wood
Ann Wood Artist & Media Relations
709 Mayflower Road, Ste. 201
Norfolk, VA 23508
annwood@cox.net
