Jurgen Vollmer Photographs

What photographic image best defines rock and roll? If John Lennon's famous doorway pose emphatically springs to mind, then be aware that this image began in the mind of Jurgen Vollmer, and it was his deft touch that brought it to life

Jurgen Vollmer was born into the cultural hot-house of postwar Hamburg in 1941, and trained at its illustrious art-school. When in 1960, an unknown Beatles came to play in residence at a club in the town's red-light district, they were befriended by this gifted young photographer, and his 'Existentialist' colleagues Astrid Kirchherr and Klaus Voormann: the creative spark that flared between those two groups was to transform a generation. Jurgen began by turning the very precise images he would formulate in his mind into the photographs which many (The Beatles included) believe defined the band's early, rocker incarnation. His most famous Beatle image is the cover of Lennon's 1975 Rock'nRoll album.

In 1961, Jurgen Vollmer moved to Paris to work as assistant to the famous photographer and director William Klein, and found himself a part of the city's influential rive gauche community. In September of that year John Lennon and Paul McCartney came to visit him there. It proved to be a very influential week. They bought themselves many of the fashionable clothes he was sporting, and it was there that John and Paul asked Jurgen to cut their hair like his own, and it was he - in his Montparnasse hotel-room - who turned their hairstyles into what became famous worldwide as the 'Beatle cut'.

During the early Sixties, Jurgen Vollmer worked for Klein as a fashion photographer. For himself, however, he made studies of the street youth and the environment of their lives, to serious acclaim. Pictures he took of Nureyev, his first 'celebrity', in 1966 are considered by many to be best taken of dancer-artist. By the late Sixties, Jurgen was a stills photographer on European movie sets. Already he was working with the famous director Alain Resnais; and amongst his subjects were Catherine Deneuve and Yves Montand.

On a film shoot in New York in 1971, Jurgen Vollmer fell in love with the city and did not return to Europe with the film crew. He became a still photographer on America's East Coast, and stayed in vibrant New York for some years, making his name in the Eighties and Nineties as one of the most highly sought-after film-star and movie- still photographers.

Jurgen moved to Hollywood in 1988, there becoming a regular under directors ranging from Francis Coppola and Barry Levinson to Roman Polanski, Lawrence Kastan and Norman Jewison.

His images are instantly recognizable throughout the world. His iconographic photos rank among them studies of Arnold Schwartzenegger, Madonna, Barbra Streisand, Nastassja Kinski, Jeanne Moreau, Robert Redford, Isabella Adjani, Dirk Bogarde, William Burroughs and John Travolta. His photos are always front-of-house material.

You can find a large number of his photographs for sale @
http://www.rockstore.net 
I have not done business with them as yet but all my sources tell me that they are great to do business with.

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