Listen
395 venues. 89 cities. 26 states. 13 years.
The LISTEN project is a visual index of American rock n’ roll history and its landscape. It began in 2006 with a desire to image CBGB, the iconic temple of punk on Manhattan’s Bowery before it closed its doors for good. That click of the shutter, days before Patti Smith played the last concert, spun into so many more. That moment stretched itself into a decade, composing a comprehensive mapping of American music’s inner architecture. It took me across the United States in search of the recording studios, clubs, concert halls, arenas, ballrooms, churches, living rooms, prisons and fields where our most vital music was created, played, witnessed and engraved.
Experiencing music, listening, is an act both collective and personal. For this reason I stood in the spaces alone. Room is cleared for memory, which in turn accepts time. And time is the heart of music, as the pulse and rhythm of call and response.
LISTEN is my response.
427 images
Lenny Kaye essay
Lenny Kaye is an author, composer, and long-time collaborator and lead guitarist for the Patti Smith Group
2006 - 2018
40”x40” / 101.6 cm x101.6 cm
color coupler