David Kordansky Gallery opens "An American Beauty: Grateful Dead 1965–1995" in New York on 23 June, featuring work from eleven photographers who documented the band and its community from rare positions of access and trust.
David Kordansky Gallery opens “An American Beauty: Grateful Dead 1965–1995” in New York on 23 June, bringing together more than four decades of photography from some of the most trusted documentarians of the band and the world that formed around it.
Curated by Jay and Ricki Blakesberg, the exhibition features 21 large-scale prints and more than two dozen smaller photographic works spanning the full arc of the Dead’s history ,from the Haight-Ashbury days through the Jerry Garcia years. The photographers represented include Jay Blakesberg, Adrian Boot, Suki Coughlin, Greg Gaar, Andy Leonard, Rosie McGee, Bob Minkin, Ron Rakow, Jon Sievert, Elizabeth Sunflower and Kirk West, many of whom started out as Deadheads before becoming significant rock photographers in their own right.
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This is the exhibition’s New York debut, following earlier runs in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, where it featured as part of the Dead Forever Experience at Sphere during Dead & Company’s 2024 residency. Several images appear here for the first time. Performance shots and portraits sit alongside crowd photographs and quieter candid moments. Among them is a 1968 Rosie McGee image of Jerry Garcia with author and Merry Prankster Ken Kesey, and a 1979 Jay Blakesberg photograph of Bob Weir and keyboardist Brent Mydland at a Washington D.C. No Nukes rally. Major milestones like the Wall of Sound and the band’s annual New Year’s Eve runs in the Bay Area also feature throughout.
Jerry Garcia, Ken Kesey – August 1968 © Rosie McGee | Retro Photo Archive
“I’ve been part of this Grateful Dead world for a long time — first as a fan, and then as a professional photographer,” Jay Blakesberg says. “A lot of us Deadheads who were out there seeing shows started from the same place. We were documenting something organically from the inside as it was happening. I was just trying to capture the bliss that was in front of me. To see it recognised now, alongside the work of these other photographers at David Kordansky Gallery, makes it feel that much more important.”
The exhibition arrives in the wake of the recent deaths of Bobby Weir and Phil Lesh, lending the Blakesbergs’ archival and curatorial work a particular weight. “These photographs tell the story of an entire culture, but they also speak to the individual lives of the musicians, the photographers, and the many Deadheads like myself who have charted our lives alongside the Dead’s music and shows,” Kordansky says.
The opening reception takes place Tuesday 23 June from 6–8 PM at 520 W. 20th St., New York. The exhibition runs through 7 August 2026. Check out the Retro Photo Archive here.
