Bio:
Over the past 50 years Lynn Goldsmith’s photography has appeared on and between the covers of Life, Newsweek, Time, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated, National Geographic Traveler, People, Elle, Interview, The New Yorker, etc. Her subjects have varied from entertainment personalities to sports stars, from film directors to authors, from the extraordinary to the ordinary man on the street. imagery is in numerous museum collections: The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, The Museum of Modern Art, The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Museum Folkwang, The Polaroid Collection, The Kodak Collection, etc. It’s also in the personal art collections of many celebrities: Michael J. Fox, Miley Cyrus, Elton John, Elliot Paige, to name a few. Winning numerous prestigious awards: the Lucien Clergue, World Press in Portraiture, the Lucie in Portraiture, Lynn considers herself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to make her quest into the nature of identity, into beauty, into stardom, and the human spirit, to be both her life adventure and her livelihood.
Fifteen books of Lynn’s imagery have been published. The Rizzoli coffee table photo book, New Kids, made The New York Times Best Seller list. This is a rare occurrence for any book of photography. Her sixteenth book, Springsteen and the E Street Band, published by Taschen, will be released fall of 2023. She’s also received two New York Art Direction awards for her books Circus Dreams, and Rock and Roll Stories.
Lynn’s professional achievements are in no way limited to the world of photography. In 1969 for Electra Records, she created the ‘bio-disk,’ won a Clio for her inventive radio spots, and was one of the first to make short films of musicians to be used for promotion of the album. Lynn is the youngest woman member ever to be accepted into the DGA (Director’s Guild of America). In 1971, she was a director for Joshua Television, the first company to do video magnification for rock groups entertaining at what was then considered large venues, i.e. Madison Sq Garden and the Hollywood Bowl. In 1972, she became a director for the first rock show on late night network television: ABC’s “In Concert”. By 1973, Lynn stopped directing TV and joined Andy Cavaliere to co-manage Grand Funk Railroad. Lynn created the American Band campaign. She made a documentary styled film for their song “We’re An American Band” and was the first to not only make sure it was released as a theatrical short, serviced to US Army bases worldwide, but also used to make TV spots. For their next album, Lynn was the first to do a 3D album cover with punch out 3D glasses. By 1976 Lynn was ready to move on and left management to focus on a career as a photographer. She founded a photo agency that licensed her work and others to publications across the globe. It was the first photo agency to focus on celebrity portraiture. Established in 1976, when news photography was what photo agencies focused on, Lynn seemed to know a decade before others that the magazine appetite would shift from world events to more coverage of the biggest names in entertainment.
By the early 80’s Lynn expanded her creativity to become the first ‘optic-music’ artist. Using the a.k.a. Will Powers, she wrote and produced the album “Dancing For Mental Health” released on Island Records. Working with noted musicians Sting, Steve Winwood, Todd Rundgren and Nile Rodgers, her debut album won critical acclaim and the single, Kissing With Confidence, reached #3 on the British charts. As was her plan, the videos from the album which she produced and directed, became more than simply commercials to sell the record. They were used by the United States Department of Labor to inspire unemployed youths, by the National Marriage Counsel in England and by Harvard University to help with language instruction. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City has two Will Powers videos in their permanent collection. Lynn was among the first artists to do 3-dimensional computer animation as seen in her 1983 video, Adventures in Success. The roots of her music came from the experience of being in a band, The Walking Wounded, while attending the University of Michigan where she graduated in 3 years, Magna Cum Laude, with a B.A. in both English and Psychology. Though highly educated, Lynn considers herself a self-taught artist.
In 2016 a lawsuit was brought against her by the Andy Warhol Foundation for her studio portrait of Prince. For seven years she fought to protect her copyright, and that of all artists, to their work. The legal battle went all the way to the Supreme Court, and in May of 2023, Lynn won a 7-2 victory. This ruling insured that the copyright law would not become so diluted by an unclear definition of fair use that visual artists could lose the rights to their work. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor called Lynn “a trailblazer.” The Chronicle book ‘200 Women Who Will Change the Way You See the World‘ included Lynn. The wide range of Lynn’s talents, skills and achievements are products of a belief she holds constant: If you want to maximize your potential for living a full life, you needs to break limiting thought patterns, bust through fear, take risks, and persistently work hard to reach your goals.
Recommend Lynn Goldsmith in order to appear here. Click on the grey crosses visible when logged in. Your photo will appear, with a link back to your page:
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; recorded "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
Conceived under a Spiritus Mundi ranging from the quilombos and senzalas of Cachoeira and Santo Amaro to Havana and the provinces of Cuba to the wards of New Orleans to the South Side of Chicago to the sidewalks of Harlem to the townships of South Africa to the villages of Ireland to the Roma camps of France and Belgium to the Vienna of Beethoven to the shtetls of Eastern Europe...*
*...in conversation with Raymundo Sodré, who summed up the irony in this sequence by opining for the ages: "Where there's misery, there's music!" Thus A Massa, anthem for the trod-upon folk of Brazil, which blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south until Sodré was silenced, threatened with death and forced into exile...
And thus a platform whereupon all creators tend to accessible proximity to all other creators, irrespective of degree of fame, location, or the censor.
Matrix Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, bewitching and bewitched, contouring the resplendent Bay of All Saints (end of clip below, before credits), absolute center of terrestrial gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings (and for the sublimity these people created), the bay presided over by Brazil's ineffable Black Rome (seat of the Integrated Global Creative Economy* and where Bule Bule is seated below, around the corner from where we built this matrix as an extension of our record shop).
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
*Darius Mans holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT, and lives between Washington D.C. and Salvador da Bahia.
Between 2000 and 2004 he served as the World Bank’s Country Director for Mozambique and Angola. In that capacity, Darius led a team which generated $150 million in annual lending to Mozambique, including support for public private partnerships in infrastructure which catalyzed over $1 billion in private investment.
Darius was an economist with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where he worked closely with the U.S. Treasury and the IMF to establish a framework to avoid debt repudiation and to restructure private commercial debt in Brazil and Chile.
He taught Economics at the University of Maryland and was a consultant to KPMG on infrastructure projects in Latin America.
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
EX TERRA BRASILIS
The Small World Phenomenon
Susan Rogers
Alicia Svigals
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Sodré
Betão Aguiar
Bule Bule
Caetano Veloso
Darius Mans
Sparrow/Pardal Roberts
RÁDIO MATRIX