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Boston Globe
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Eric Antoniou's music photography: when open eyes meet open ears
'On any given night,' the Boston-based photographer has said, 'I could go from photographing Seiji Ozawa at Symphony Hall to shooting River Phoenix at Advertisement Neither Ozawa nor Phoenix shows up at Panopticon. A whole lot of other musical people do. Among them are multiple local heroes: Peter Wolf, Aerosmith, Dropkick Murphys, Morphine, Donna Summer, Leonard Bernstein (born in Lawrence; Boston Latin, '35). There are also such notable out-of-towners as Johnny Cash, Sting, Sonny Rollins, David Bowie, Kurt Cobain, Dizzy Gillespie, and Mick Jagger. Advertisement Jagger's is one of three color photographs in the show; the others are of Summer and David Byrne. Antoniou has captured a marvelous in-performance moment, with Jagger's hands clasped, prayer-like. What makes it even more marvelous is that next to the photograph is the one of Bernstein. At least for some of us, that juxtaposition summons a certain famous Stephen Sondheim line from a certain famous It's the musician subjects who matter — although with one of the pictures it's a band's fans who matter, that band being Green Day. But part of the fun of 'Rock to Baroque' is looking beyond the faces to note various musicianly appurtenances. Some are to be expected. Wolf, Bono, and Yoko Ono wear sunglasses. Wolf's are the best looking, Bono's the most theatrical, Yoko's the most … formidable. There are lots of hats: Wolf again; Dizzy; Waits; Junior Wells, who seems to be swallowing his blues harp; Aerosmith's Tom Hamilton. Morphine's Dana Colley and Billy Conway have their heads covered, but not Mark Sandman. One of the Dropkicks wears a scally cap (a kilt, too). Dewey Redman has what appears to be a toque atop his head. But the headgear is easy to miss, since what stands out is the look he's exchanging with his bare-headed son, and fellow tenor saxophonist, Joshua, as they duet. Some of the appurtenances are most definitely not to be expected: a bullhorn (Waits), a snazzy scarf (Bernstein), an apple (Yoko), a headband so elaborate it verges on tiara (a magisterial Bunny Wailer). Advertisement There is much else of note. Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong offers an extended middle finger — to the audience, not Antoniou. The tight framing around the face of James Cotton makes his expression seem all the more haunted. Who knew that Leonard Cohen, seen performing, and Philip Glass, posing for his portrait, look enough alike to be cousins? There's one complaint to make about the show. The photos lack dates, whereas many of those in Antoniou's book have them. 'Who,' 'how,' and 'what' take priority here, obviously; but 'when' would be welcome, too. The only one of Antoniou's subjects to make more than one appearance is Dizzy Gillespie. On Panopticon's Wall Gallery, Devo gets five. Two are by Allan Tanenbaum, with the others taken by Ebet Roberts, Neal Preston, and Richard Alden Peterson. Captions note that 'Purchase of prints includes exclusive VIP meet & greet with DEVO.' It's unclear whether 'VIP' refers to prospective purchaser or presented band. All of Antoniou's photographs have people in them, obviously, and all except for the shots of Morphine and the Dropkicks were taken indoors. This makes for a fundamental contrast with Joseph Levendusky's 22 photographs in 'A Sense of Place.' It runs through June 27 at the Paul Dietrich Gallery, which is in the offices of the architectural firm CambridgeSeven. Levendusky likes to shoot at magic hour, that time at dawn or dusk when light is at its softest and most forgiving, and these very handsome color photographs all but glow. Most show human handwork — downtown Providence, the Northern Avenue Bridge, a gingerbread Victorian, in Bennington, Vt. — but only two include actual humans. Advertisement That absence gives the images an arresting purity. They have a consistent look — clean unto pristine — which means the most arresting are of sites and structures that are anything but pristine: a decrepit wooden house, in Adams, say, or a ghost sign on a brick warehouse, in Chelsea. Levendusky's camera makes of decay a thing of wonder. Rust never sleeps, the saying goes. Here it can be seen to dream. ERIC ANTONIOU: ROCK TO BAROQUE — Four Decades of Music Photography At Panopticon Gallery, 502c Commonwealth Ave. (inside the Hotel Commonwealth), through June 30. 781-740-1300, A SENSE OF PLACE: Photographs by Joseph Levendusky At Paul Dietrich Gallery at CambridgeSeven, 20 University Road, third floor, through June 27. 617-492-7000, Mark Feeney can be reached at
Boston Globe
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Photographer Eric Antoniou's ‘Rock to Baroque' reveals insider's view of Boston's music history
'We didn't have the right paper,' Antoniou recalled in a recent interview with the Globe. 'It looked bad.' All these years later, the photographer is set to publish his first true book, 'Rock to Baroque: Four Decades of Music Photography,' an elegantly designed coffee table hardcover that showcases his career's work (on high-quality glossy paper). A launch party takes place on Thursday at Panopticon Gallery in the Hotel Commonwealth, kicking off an exhibit that runs through June 30. From "Rock to Baroque," the Dropkick Murphys on the roof of Antoniou's South End studio in 2000. Eric Antoniou Antoniou, who freelanced for the Globe for several years around 1990 (and again, more recently, for the Globe Magazine), began taking photos at music shows after coming to Boston from his native Greece in the early 1980s. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'My first camera was point-and-shoot,' Antoniou says, 'and I started listening to music from a very young age. It was a dual passion.' Advertisement Some of his family elders had already resettled in the Boston area, including two great-uncles who opened the Model Cafe, the classic Allston barroom, almost 100 years ago. In Greece, he had to get the local music shop owner to make tape recordings of albums by his favorite bands — Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, AC/DC — since he didn't have a turntable. In Boston, the concert calendar overflowed, from great local groups to international superstars. Advertisement As a student at the New England School of Photography, Antoniou began getting assignments to shoot live shows for the Globe. He can't recall the first one, but he does remember snapping pictures of Timothy Leary during an appearance at Catch a Rising Star, the former Cambridge comedy club. The first photo in the book is a 1985 performance shot of the Irish songwriter and guitarist Rory Gallagher, who was a huge star across Europe, but not in the United States. 'I couldn't believe he was playing at the Paradise for 300 people,' Antoniou says. For the next handful of years, he photographed some of the world's biggest rock bands — the Rolling Stones, the Who, Fleetwood Mac, David Bowie — for the Globe, as well as country artists (Steve Earle), jazz musicians (Sonny Rollins), rappers (Public Enemy), and plenty more. Eric Antoniou photographed Roy Orbison during a performance at the Channel nightclub on Dec. 3, 1988, days prior to the singer-songwriter's death. Eric Antoniou He was there for the show that Roy Orbison played at the Channel in December 1988, capping off a big comeback year for the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer. Three days later, Orbison died of a heart attack at age 52. The Associated Press picked up his photo, 'and it went everywhere,' he says. 'I was 23 years old.' For the Globe and later the Boston Phoenix, Antoniou also shot hundreds of portraits of the city's homegrown bands and musicians, among them Morphine, Tracy Chapman, the Dropkick Murphys, Buffalo Tom, Aimee Mann, and Juliana Hatfield. One image in the book focuses on a steel guitar in the hands of the late blues guitarist Kenny Holladay, who busked on the streets around Harvard Square. 'He was amazing,' Antoniou says, 'but he never made it [in the music business].' Advertisement With a prologue written by Robert Pinsky, the former US poet laureate, the book includes captions provided by Jim Sullivan, the former Globe rock critic, as well as Ted Drozdowski, Jon Garelick, Lloyd Schwartz, and others. Some of the captions come from reviews or interviews written at the time of the concerts; others are recollections. According to Antoniou, concert photography grew more restrictive with the establishment of the 'three song' rule, which requires professional photographers to leave after the first three songs of the show. The rule is often attributed to Bruce Springsteen, but he says it may have been Hall and Oates. Singer Tracy Chapman during a July 3, 1990 performance at Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts (now Xfinity Center) in Mansfield. Eric Antoniou In any case, easy access and backstage passes are no longer part of the perks of being a concert photographer. Beyond Boston, Antoniou's work has been published in Rolling Stone, People magazine, and The New York Times. He has taken pictures of Mike Dukakis, Bill Clinton, and the late Paul Tsongas on the presidential campaign trail, during protests at the time of the first Gulf War and following the murder of George Floyd, and inside the world of the homeless population of his adopted city. One of his favorite photos is the one he took of Jim Morrison's tombstone in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. As a rock-obsessed teenager in the mountain village where he grew up in Greece, he was enamored with the Doors, whose lead singer liked to reference Greek mythology. The tombstone bears the Greek phrase 'kata ton daimona eautou.' It translates roughly as 'true to his own spirit.' James Sullivan can be reached at James Sullivan can be reached at
