The Dylan breakthrough portfolio

When photographer Daniel Kramer first met Bob Dylan, the 23-year-old singer was still widely unknown. At their initial meeting in Woodstock, Dylan seemed restless and uncomfortable in front of the camera. Yet over the course of a year and a day, all of that would change. From 1964 to 1965, Kramer’s extraordinary access to Bob Dylan on tour, in concert, and backstage, allowed for one of the most mesmerizing portfolios of any recording artist and a stunning document of Dylan breaking through to superstardom.

Highlights include the Lincoln Center’s Philharmonic Hall concert with Joan Baez; the Bringing It All Back Home recording sessions; and the now-famous concert at Forest Hills, when Dylan’s controversial transition to electric guitar exemplified his constant, cryptic state of becoming. As much a document of a seminal period of rock’n’roll history as of Dylan himself, the pictures also feature such compelling friends and collaborators as Joan Baez, Johnny Cash, Allen Ginsberg, and Albert Grossman.

When first published in 1967, with the encouragement of W. Eugene Smith, Kramer’s Dylan portfolio became an instant classic. Now, a half century later, TASCHEN rediscovers this body of work with a curated selection of nearly 200 images, many never published before, including outtakes from the Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited album cover shoots. A prized edition for any serious Dylan fan, this is at once an intimate and evocative testimony to a seminal photographer, to a particular point in time, and to a particular, mysterious artist at the moment his career went global.

Collector’s Edition of 1,565 copies (No. 201–1,765), each numbered and signed by Daniel Kramer.

Also available as two Art Editions of 100 copies each (No. 1–100 and No. 101–200), both with a print numbered and signed by Daniel Kramer.