**About Joel Brodsky**

Born, bred and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Joel Brodsky attended Syracuse University where he took a course in photography. After graduation he worked at a local camera store acquiring the cameras he later went into business with. He served a stint in the army, and then worked as an assistant to one of New York's top fashion photographers. In 1967 he opened his first studio and, after a period of mild starvation, he made his first music photographs as a favour. They were used on an album cover, and he was on a roll. His fourth cover shoot was for The Doors self titled debut album and this photograph was nominated for a Grammy. He went on to photograph many diverse artists from Aretha Franklin to Judy Collins, from Iggy Pop to Isaac Hayes and from Country Joe and The Fish to Gladys Knight & The Pips. Among his last album sessions was wth Kiss in 1975 . After losing his patience with musicians and frustrated by the reduced size of album artwork brought about by the introduction of CDs, he went back to fashion and beauty advertising photography.

**Photographing The Doors**

Most of Joel Brodsky's photographs are the result of two studio sessions with The Doors in 1967 . The first produced the Grammy nominated back cover photograph used on their first album, _The Doors_. This was a quadruple exposure combining portraits of the individual group members, a technically advanced piece of camera work long before the introduction of Photoshop editing software. This first 1967 session, in his Manhattan studio, also produced the photograph that was used on their fourth album, _The Soft Parade_, and many well known photographs of both the whole group and Jim Morrison alone (with his shirt on).

Joel also made the _Strange Days_ album cover photograph, which features a group of circus performers dancing in an alley. The Doors don't appear in person on the Strange Days cover - they are featured in a poster on the wall behind the circus troupe - this poster image is also by Joel, and was used on the back of their debut album. The concept for_Strange Days_ started with The Doors' suggestion of two dwarves holding a mirror with their reflection in it. Joel embellished this original idea with a nod of thanks to Henri Cartier-Bresson and Federico Fellini's surreal 1954 circus road movie La Strada.

The second studio shoot was probably the ultimate rock 'n' roll photo session. Initially a group session, this gave rise to classic group portraits - one of which was used on the inner record sleeve of Strange Days. Later in the session, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore left Joel alone with Jim to make the classic photographs of a shirtless Jim Morrison that are known the world over. Strangely, Oliver Stone decided to portray Joel as a beautiful woman played by Mimi Rogers in his 1990 Biography movie 'The Doors'. Joel's photographs from this second studio session were eventually used on nine Doors album covers (and counting).

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