Legendary rock ‘n’ roll photographer Jim Marshall is to have a street named after him in San Francisco, close to his apartment where musicians would frequently mingle.
Marshall is an almost mythical figure in music photography. Annie Leibovitz called him “the rock ‘n’ roll photographer,” and his cantankerous temperament is almost as well-known as his photography.
Immersed in the San Francisco music scene of the 1960s and 1970s, Marshall photographed local artists like Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and The Grateful Dead, while also capturing the likes of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and The Rolling Stones when they were in California — all on his trusty Leica.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that these famous faces would arrive at his apartment on 16th Street, often to buy prints. Despite being well-known for carrying a gun and sometimes being ill-tempered, he welcomed people dropping by and his photos put San Francisco at the center of the 1960s counterculture movement.
Marshall, who died in New York City in 2010, is the first and only photographer to be presented with the Recording Academy’s Trustee Award, an honorary Grammy presented to individuals for non-performance contributions to the music industry.
According to the Chronicle, his longtime assistant Amelia Davis, who manages the Jim Marshall Estate and Archive, knocked on doors in the Castro neighborhood to support a petition renaming the block in Marshall’s honor. She had to get 70% of 16th Street residents to approve. Davis tells the Chronicle that many older residents remember him for being “an a-hole but a great photographer.” She took prints of his work to show younger residents.
An official unveiling ceremony will take place on December 19 at the intersection of Noe and 16th Street. Anyone is welcome to attend.
San Francisco: The City That Names Streets After Photographers
It marks the second street named after a photographer in San Francisco in less than one year. Joe Rosenthal, the photographer who captured the iconic war image Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, also had a block in downtown San Francisco named after him. While Marshall is better-known for his body of work, Rosenthal’s career is very much defined by that single image taken during World War II.
After the war had ended, Rosenthal worked at the San Francisco Chronicle. The 600 block of Sutter Street was commemoratively named Joe Rosenthal Way.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.