herb bio
About Herb Nolan
Herb Nolan is a photographer and writer living in Chicago whose photographic work includes not only
jazz and blues subjects but images jumping from city life in Chicago to rural America and Mexico.
His photos have been seen on record album covers, displayed at the Illinois State Museum, and published in newspapers books and magazines including
Down Beat, Playboy, Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun-Times, and Chicago Reader.
HERB NOLAN, photography. Blues, rock and jazz photographer Herb Nolan captured the luminaries of the mid-twentieth-century music scene from his Chicago vantage point, always adopting a relaxed and unstudied approach, even in his performance shots. Neither hyping their images nor subverting them, Nolan strains his subjects through an affirmative humanist sieve, presenting them simply as regular guys who are deprived of any aura, but are all the more accessible and ingratiating without one. Nolan's banner shot shows Frank Zappa noodling on his guitar in a littered dressing room, oblivious to everything but his instrument. Dressed down, backstage and at his ease--with a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon on the table next to him--Zappa is human-all-too-human in the best way. This image is not ready to adorn an album cover, but in a saner world it would be. (New City Michael Weinstein)
