Photo Stills, Nash & Young

Graham Nash made his name as a singer with the Hollies and then Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, but his claim to fame in the photo world is his pioneering use of digital Iris printers to create fine-art prints. This pursuit led to Nash Editions, one of the world's preeminent digital printing studios. But Nash's love of photography goes way back before his music career — his father turned him on to the medium when he was 10 — and he's always carried cameras to document his life. (His 1970 shot of Neil Young is at left.) A selection of Nash's images are now on display in Eye to Eye: The Photographs of Graham Nash, at New York City's Morrison Hotel Gallery through the beginning of May.

"It's all just me shooting off my mouth, representing my world and the world I see," says Nash of his songwriting as well as his candid black-and-white photography. "The images in this show are oriented toward famous people who are my friends, with good reason: This is a celebrity rock-and-roll gallery, so they chose this stuff and I'm quite pleased with their choices." Among the selections are photos of Bob Dylan, Cass Elliot, Jackson Browne, Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, and of course Crosby, Stills, and Young.

The Morrison Hotel Gallery, at 124 Prince Street in SoHo, is named after the famous cover photo of the Doors album shot by rock photographer Henry Diltz, who is one of the gallery's co-founders. With branches in Los Angeles and La Jolla, California, the gallery specializes in rock-and-roll photography.

Before the Nash show went public, at a reception for the artist April 19, a swirl of photo aficionados surrounded Nash and friends in a festive gathering. I came to the party with a fresh appreciation of Nash's visual work, as it's part of a special issue that American Photo is putting together (July/August) about musicians who are serious photographers.

Before the party I happened to buy a CD by Lou Reed — another musician/photographer in our issue — of the 1988 album New York, arguably Reed's best solo album (previously I just had a worn-out cassette of it). At the party, I showed the new CD to designer Spencer Drate, author of Rock Art and several other books about design and music. Drate enthusiastically pointed out that he designed the cover to Reed's album, and shared anecdotes about how he had Reed stand for the cover in different poses that were later stitched together in a composite shot, all pre-digital. "That would be a piece of cake in Photoshop," he said, "but we did it the hard way."

Photographer Rowland Scherman joined this conversation and let it be known that he shot the iconic cover photo of Bob Dylan that graced the cover of Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits, with Dylan's hair backlit with a halo effect. Scherman recalled that he shot it from a distance at a late-'60s concert where he took several frames before he knew he had what he was after, and that art director John Berg picked the image from a contact sheet. "That's the next cover!" Scherman recalled Berg saying the moment he saw it.

About that time Graham Nash walked by, exchanged introductions, and opined that both of those album covers were classics. He shared some of his own anecdotes about cover art, including the classic shot by Henry Diltz on the cover of Crosby Stills & Nash's first album.

There was a shuffling of people in the gallery and the next thing I knew, a photographer said "Let's get Graham and Neil together." I turned around to see Neil Young standing next to me. After his obligatory photo-op, Young turned my way.

I offered an off-hand joke: "Are you a photographer too?" He grinned. "Well, I have a camera," he said, "but I won't be showing my pictures in a gallery any time soon." He introduced his wife Pegi and we chatted briefly; Young related that he's used to having Nash shooting photos of him because Graham constantly carries a camera.

Then documentary photography James Nachtwey walked by. "Are you a musician too?" he was facetiously asked. "No, I'm just a photographer," he deadpanned, an understatement. "But I really love all this stuff," Nachtwey added, looked around at the pictures in the gallery. "These pictures bring back memories." He gestured toward Young and Nash. "These guys provided the soundtrack of our lives." — Jack Crager