In his 50-plus years as a photographer, Kirk West has never taken a selfie.
Some friends wish he would, though, because West is undeniably picturesque. His laugh lines run deep in a mug etched indelibly by a million late nights of mischief, excess, and good times. There is the telltale, throwback ponytail, a rainbow tapestry of fading tattoos swirling around his arms, and world of knowing in his benedictory grin. On a Mount Rushmore monument of scruffy, free-wheeling partiers who have somehow survived their lifestyles in extremis, West, who is 63, belongs up there with Keith Richards, Willie Nelson, and Gregg Allman. He just prefers to keep his lens focused outward, aimed at others in his rock ‘n’ roll tribe, and they have seldom enjoyed a more affectionate and canny documentarian.
“The gift that photography is to me is the ability to see something, feel something, and share it with someone without saying a word,” he says, “and have that other person experience those same feelings.”
From 1989 to 2010, West was tour manager for the Allman Brothers Band, a position he likens to “maitre’d for the best party in the world.” Since coming off the road, he has been taking inventory of his archive – several decades’ worth of hundreds of negatives from moments he mostly remembers. “There’ll be shit I scan that I don’t remember, but 98 percent of the time, the whole thing comes back to me,” he says. Some of these images can be seen at Gallery West, his chic exhibition spot which opened this spring in downtown Macon, and others will appear in Les Brers: Kirk West’s Photographic Journey with The Brothers, a mammoth coffeetable book – more than 250 pages of 350+ images – scheduled for publication this autumn.
“Kirk West is one of the best photographers I’ve had the pleasure of working with,” says Chuck Leavell, keyboardist for the Allman Brothers and the Rolling Stones. “He has a keen eye for capturing the moment as well as the personality of his subjects. We’ve worked together in several different circumstances, and it is always a joy to see him behind his camera. I’m really pleased that he now has his own gallery in Macon where visitors can enjoy his work.”
Gallery West plans to hold revolving exhibits of the music-related photography of others, along with its standing, permanent collection of West’s work, a visual “who’s who” of seemingly everyone who has commandeered a stage and galvanized a crowd in the past half-century. There’s Bob Marley levitating, his dreadlocks standing on end like ecstatic snakes, and here is Tom Waits, wreathed in cigarette smoke and rooting around in garbage cans. “I could do the whole gallery in Tom Waits,” West says. Chuck Leavell looks doe-eyed and gentle in his portraits, while Keith Richards – labeled as “Keef” — is all gristle and taut sinew, and Iggy Pop glowers like some feral creature. You can see the perspiration dripping off hard-working Bruce Springsteen. Peter Tosh is smoking a blunt, and Sting is roller skating in a Mickey Mouse shirt. And, in one shot that captures two distinctly different artists at work, James Brown and Charlie Daniels share a stage in Nashville – “The Godfather and the Fiddler.” (A visitor suggested it be titled “Ebony and Irony.”) Most of these images are shot in black-and-white rather than color.
“I have a lot of great color work, especially in my recent travel photos, but black-and-white is my passion,” West says, “For 20 years, I saw the world in textures and shades of gray. I feel that the B&W prints create a more timeless feel of the image. It also demands that you examine or embrace the subject more intimately, rather than just be dazzled by the colors.”
All of his images consistently thrum with a sense of immediacy and in-the-moment closeness; you can hear, and feel, the music in them.
“What makes his photos stand out is that it’s not just some flat image of a guy with a guitar,” says Alan Paul, author of One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. “Kirk regards his subjects with great empathy. He has the vision to see past the surface and looks inside, into the heart and soul of his subjects, to see the whole person. Kirk is an artist himself, so he truly sees and appreciates the artist in others.”
And, as West phrases it, he has learned through long experience to “anticipate the moment of ejaculation” – the money shot, as it were.
West grew up in the town of Nevada, Iowa, of Norwegian descent, with some Pawnee Indian and “real cowboy” in his lineage. His grandmother gave him a Brownie camera when he was 10, and he began photographing cars – drag races, hot-rods, anything that moved fast. The first music act he photographed was MC5, and his first concert shoot was Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. He attended Iowa State, and in 1968 joined Students for a Democratic Society “for the reefer and girls” – an affiliation that led him to the notorious Democratic Convention in Chicago that year.
“I wanted to be in San Francisco where the revolution was going down, but Chicago was closer and therefore more strikeable for me,” he says.
West relocated to the Windy City and began honing his chops “down in the pit” at the sweaty blues clubs, where he photographed Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Willie Dixon and others. He also made his way to every rock club and music venue, which he breached easily enough by bribing the gatekeepers with a joint or two; security guards evidently like to toke, too. One night, at a Chicago joint called Beaver’s, he discovered an act that quickly became his favorite.
“There was this band of hippies playing loud as shit,” he recalls, “and they looked like us. Their ‘Blackhearted Woman’ knocked me upside the head. Their music changed my life.”
West had discovered the Allman Brothers Band. He made it his mission to become not just their paparazzo but also their friend. “For a long time, they didn’t know my name, but they knew my face and what I carried in my pocket,” West says, referring to the weed that functioned as a handy V.I.P. pass.
West began doing regular photography work for Capricorn Records, and he ended up touring with the band. When the members “realized I could talk loud and get people to move faster,” he says, they offered him a job.
“His official title was road manager,” Paul says, “but he was also called the ‘tour mystic’ and the ‘tour magician.’ He could make things magically appear or disappear. The empathy that makes him a great photographer also served him well as the tour mystic.”
West was an associate producer of “Dreams,” the four-CD, 20th anniversary project of the Brothers, and he handled the visuals for several projects and album covers, including “Seven Turns,” “Shades of Two Worlds,” and “An Evening with the Allman Brothers Band.” He also shot about 75 magazine covers and three dozen LP covers for artists such as Willie Nelson, Delbert McClinton, and Son Seals.
West married his wife, Kirsten, who was an insurance executive at the time, in a rocking ceremony at one of Buddy Guy’s blues clubs in Chicago. In 1993, the Midwestern couple relocated to Macon to move into the Big House, the Vineville Avenue mansion that was home to The Allman Brothers Band’s original members from 1970 to 1973. They restored the place; enshrined their sprawling collection of memorabilia; and established the nonprofit Big House Foundation, which assumed ownership and management of the museum in 2007, when the Wests moved to Shirley Hills.
“Renovating the place was a massive undertaking, but it was all worth it,” he says.
He directed the critically-acclaimed Please Call Home documentary, which covered the early years of the Allman Brothers Band while living at the Big House
Nowadays, West is trying to get the hang of the digital revolution, but he remains a purist a heart.
“In this day and age, the photo has gotten convoluted,” says Adam Smith, a music photographer who plans to exhibit his work at Gallery West. “Kirk knows what it means to shoot film, to hold a roll in his hand to look through a loop and choose the right negative of a shot you think about long before capturing it, hoping it comes out how you imagined it would. That is real photography. He knows what shutter speed, aperture, and shooting at ISO 3200 means. To smell the chemicals. To have those chemicals soak through his artistic hands. Kirk is old-school.”
Adds Paul, “I didn’t realize just how deep his archive went, and I don’t think even Kirk realized everything that was right under his nose. Now that I’ve seen his body of work, I think it stands on par with photographers like Jim Marshall (who took the iconic photo of Johnny Cash giving the middle-finger salute) and Baron Wolman of Rolling Stone magazine.”
Before opening his exhibition space in Macon, West set up pop-up galleries around the Beacon Theater and festivals where ABB fans gather, and the response to his photographs was heartening. “Kirk is finally really getting noticed,” says Paul, “and I predict I he will really be ‘discovered’ now by a much wider audience with his gallery and this book coming out.”
Paul has written an essay for Les Brers, along with Sam Cutler, former tour manager for The Rolling Stones and The Grateful Dead, and John Lynskey, publisher of Hittin’ the note. Guitarist Warren Haynes has contributed the foreword.
“The book will be far out,” West says, of the project that he first started mulling in the early 1980s when he was establishing himself as one of the edgiest scrapbookers around. “Fans want to see candids, of course, and I have those from all kinds of settings — golfing, bow-hunting, eating sushi in a restaurant. And there are some bloopers and outtakes of shots people wish I hadn’t taken! That’s what I’ve been digging out recently, and it’s blowing my mind. By the time I was snapping these shots, they acted like I wasn’t even there. So there’s no self-consciousness. There’s a depth of trust and openness and intimacy. It has been a trip, reliving those times.”
West looks around his gallery and sighs with satisfaction.
“I guess I’m just a sappy, old guy who loves his life,” he says, “then and now.”
Candice Dyer's writing 