From the story for Rolling Stone:
Photographers featured in a special Los Angeles exhibit [“Country: Portraits of an American Sound” at the Annenberg Space for Photography] talk about their star subjects, from Dolly Parton to Keith Urban.
Henry Horenstein writes about his famous portrait of Dolly Parton at Symphony Hall in Boston in 1972: “Dolly was just starting out, really. She was the girl singer in the Porter Wagoner band, a big country act back in the day, and I photographed her backstage between appearances. Since she was just a featured act, she only had a few songs so we had a lot of time with her. ‘We’ was me, Ken Irwin and Marian Leighton—friends of mine who had just started Rounder Records, which was to become an important indie label featuring what we now call Americana music.
“[Dolly] was sweet, self-depreciating, charming, and gorgeous. I had a terrible crush on her and nodded at anything she said. One thing I recall she said was the reason she looked the way she did was that people didn’t come out to see her looking like them. She was talking about rural people at a music show, but I think this is good advice for any creative person.”
View Henry Horenstein’s series “Honky Tonk: Portraits of Country Music”
Browse all of Henry Horenstein’s work at ClampArt