Until October 29: FIFTY PHOTOS OF PEACE, LOVE & MUSIC. The Carlo Azeglio Ciampi Exhibition Center, Via dei Pucci 16, Florence. Open 10 am – 1 pm, 3 – 7 pm. Free admission.
More than 50 photographs – in large format and mostly unseen in Italy – relive some of the major rock music events of 1969 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival. The photographs of internationally noted photographer and director Amalie R. Rothschild, who was present at Woodstock in August, 1969, narrate the four days during which the major exponents of rock music of the 1960s performed.
The shots also feature other great rock music events which took place in that one and only inimitable year of 1969 – the Newport Festival (July), the Isle of Wight (September), the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden (November) and various concerts at the Fillmore East throughout the year including Jimi Hendrix’s New Year’s Eve show on December 31.
Amalie R. Rothschild is an internationally recognized and award winning photographer and filmmaker. She has a BFA (1967) in Graphic Design from Rhode Island School of Design where she spent her senior year on their European Honors Program in Rome, Italy. She studied photography with Harry Callahan, and has an MFA (1969) in Film Production from New York University’s Graduate Institute of Film and Television where she also studied photography with Paul Caponigro. From 1968 to 1974 she worked extensively as a free-lance photographer in the music field, her photographs appearing in The New York Times, Newsweek, Time-Life Books, Life Magazine, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, After Dark and many other publications.
From 1969 to 1971 she worked with the Joshua Light Show at the Fillmore East Theater in New York producing special effects photography, slides, graphics, films and film loops used during performances and was considered the theater’s unofficial house photographer. She had unlimited access onstage and backstage to all the happenings at the Fillmore East. During that period she also photographed anti-war/peace demonstrations in the U.S. during the 1960s and the 1967 Cannes Film Festival. Her monograph Live at the Fillmore East: A Photographic Memoir, published in 1999, was reprinted six times
A skilled and veteran filmmaker, she produced and directed documentaries with special emphasis on social issues as revealed through the lives of people in the arts including the titles “Conversations with Willard Van Dyke” (1981) and “Painting the Town: Illusionistic Murals of Richard Haas” (1990). Her films, which have been shown at and received prizes in many international festivals, have aired on public television in many countries (PBS, BBC, ABC, RAI ecc.) and been presented in programs in many important museums including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.