images

[russ]

Great image of Emmy with some of her guitars.
Photo by Carla Ciuffo.

[russ]

photo by Åsa Westerlund.png (233.22 KiB) Viewed 501 times

Here is a wonderful portrait of Emmy that i happened across recently...
taken by Åsa Westerlund.

Emmylou, the definition of beauty and grace...
i feel honored just to have known about her.

[Harvey2]

That's not a good look and why the guitars?

[Mike Rogers]

Neither Emmylou nor her guitars are looking their best.
As photos go, it's crap and just not 'her'.

[Richard H]

Now I'm going to upset my fellow englishmen here, but come on guys, what's all this "it's crap, it's just not her, it's not a good look" nonsense all about? Emmylou is human for crying out loud, & can wear a stetson if she chooses, have her hair not perfect if she chooses, & can get caught out by blinking as the camera takes the picture like we all can can't she? We can all laugh at such photos of ourselves or our loved ones, so why should Emmylou be under such ridiculous scrutiny? The very fact that everything Emmylou does ISN'T choreographed, staged, edited & manipulated by "her people" surely makes her more endearing to us doesn't it? Didn't she once ask if there's anybody left with teeth just a little uneven?

[Mike Rogers]

Now I'm going to upset my fellow englishmen here, but come on guys, what's all this "it's crap, it's just not her, it's not a good look" nonsense all about? Emmylou is human for crying out loud, & can wear a stetson if she chooses, have her hair not perfect if she chooses, & can get caught out by blinking as the camera takes the picture like we all can can't she? We can all laugh at such photos of ourselves or our loved ones, so why should Emmylou be under such ridiculous scrutiny? The very fact that everything Emmylou does ISN'T choreographed, staged, edited & manipulated by "her people" surely makes her more endearing to us doesn't it? Didn't she once ask if there's anybody left with teeth just a little uneven?

Well Richard, it boils down to a matter of opinion. In my opinion the photo of Emmylou and the guitars is one of the most staged, edited and manipulated ones of her I've ever seen.
It seems to have been put through the Photoshop editing programme. And to imagine that her photo shoots are in someway completely natural is (again in my opinion) naive. Personally I couldn't give a monkey's what she wears. My criticism is not about her but about the photographer.
But sometimes I forget that we're supposed to be fauning and sycophantic on here. Time for a break.

[Richard H]

I agree 100% with you Mike about the photo with the guitars, it's obviously staged & heavily edited, who knows, maybe for a magazine feature about her guitars, or just an art shot? I think you & Harvey were referring more to that shot, whereas I was referring more to the shot with Emmylou's eyes closed & wearing a stetson. The fact that both of you didn't comment on the shot with the guitars until after the shot with the stetson was posted led me to (mistakenly, apologies to you both) focus my attention on the wrong picture. I also agree with you about photo shoots no doubt being staged, & no doubt approved before publication. But there are plenty of photos of Emmylou floating around that are unflattering, & the fact that they are still out there for people to see & that they haven't been removed by a team of lawyers & image consultants is a situation I find encouraging. I'm sure there are plenty of other entertainers who have people doing just that. I would hope that your comments about being fawning & sycophantic in this forum weren't aimed at me, a quick read of my posts should back that up. In fact I agree with you about that sentiment, & that really was the point about my previous post, I find all of the "Emmylou the angel" stuff that gets posted here all a bit creepy. And that really was my ultimate point, she's human like the rest of us. Don't take a break Mike, I enjoy reading your posts even if I don't always agree with them, & you'd be sorely missed.

[Rick]

When I read Richard’s comments last night in relation to the earlier comments by Mike and Harvey it was pretty clear they were talking about different photographs: “Guitars? There are no guitars in that photo.” Then I saw the link in Russ’ 10 Jan posting . . . yes, that “guitar photo” is obviously reworked in an “artsy” way—the use of colour makes that clear. As Richard suggests it has the look of something created for a magazine feature, and perhaps in its intended context it was quite successful (not knowing the context it is difficult to judge). There is a world of difference between self-consciously “artsy” photography and extemporaneous “real life” shots, even when a person with a good sense of composition has done the latter, and even unquestionably successful “artistic” photographs can create erroneous impressions if taken as "real life".

Last Summer I came across an on-line article on the topic of “aging gracefully” in which the writer praised Emmylou as a positive role model for older women for allowing her hair to go grey, using the cover photo from “Stumble Into Grace” to illustrate her point. So far so good. She then went on, however, to say words to the effect that “this woman is really 64 years old, but she doesn’t look it in this photo, does she?—no wrinkles, no lines—this photograph can’t be real, it must have been Photoshopped!” I felt her statement was rather unfair and so I wrote to the writer, explaining that the photo she was using was 9-10 years old, so that Emmy would have been about 55, not 64, when it was taken, and also pointing out that this was a professionally done (“artsy”) promotional portrait made under controlled conditions of light, angle, make-up, etc, with the intent to maximize her beauty (and that set certainly achieves its goal), so it cannot be taken as showing an “everyday” Emmylou even at age 55. I also suggested that if she wanted to see what Emmylou looks like at 64 she could find numerous photos on line taken at recent concerts and public events, such as the Newport Folk Festival (there are lots on Flickr). The writer graciously acknowledged my observations and actually amended her article and posted a second photo (from NFF), although she still seemed to “miss” the point that a professional photographer can use light and angle to get a great picture without needing to resort to Photoshop ☺

Anyway, while artistic professional photography can produce beautiful images (the set for “Stumble Into Grace”, for example, or the more recent set for “Hard Bargain”), an extemporaneous “real life” shot can, I believe, give you a sense of the person, and in that spirit I want to share one of my favourite shots of Emmylou, which I found on the Bonaparte’s Retreat Facebook page:

[Harvey2]

Now that's a great picture and Emmylou looks real nice too. ;-)

[Arlene]

FIrst off, in the U.S., it's legal to take a picture of a celebrity, or anyone else, in a public setting so even if they wanted to, lawyers hired by Emmylou wouldn't be able to censor all unflattering photos of her. Second, out of respect, I would never photograph anyone against their wishes, even from a distance. Nonetheless, I found it disturbing a couple of years back when, at Emmylou's 9:00 a.m. sound check in Golden Gate Park during the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, after the crowd was asked by someone from the stage not to photograph Emmylou, security personal went around and used their hand to cover the cameras lenses of fans who persisted and tried to photograph her from a distance. I don't know if Emmylou or anyone on Emmylou's behalf asked the guards to take those actions, and I thought the fans (or professionals) were acting like jerks when they photographed her after being asked politely not to do so, but they did have the legal right to photograph her in a public forum. I heard one fan say, "I wasn't even focusing on her-- I just wanted to get a good close-up of Buddy's Wandre guitar!"