The book "Patti Smith by Hanekroot", made of the photo shoot in my studio in Amsterdam, 1976. Book design: -SYB- (Sybren Kuiper). October 1976, Amsterdam, Berenstraat 18. Patti Smith `did` Europe. Performances and promotion of her new album, Radio Ethiopia. The record company called me, if I wanted to do a photo shoot. There was one hour scheduled. And so it happened. Both Patti Smith and I worked very hard. I did not have much contact with her, but we both went on professionally and the result is, if I may say so myself, amazing. Especially when you look back now, forty years later. And especially when Dutch award winning designer -SYB-, Sybren Kuiper has made this photo book.

Biography

Gijsbert Hanekroot (Brussels, 1945) started his career as a photographer of rock musicians in the late sixties. Back then, the rock scene was not quite the well-oiled machine it is today. Things still had to be invented: light installations, sound, promotion, organization, crowd control. This also applied to music journalism and photography. Almost every week, new groups were being discovered. Every single day, people were learning things and adapting them.Hanekroot’s development as a photographer essentially ran parallel to developments in the music scene. He travelled frequently and came face to face with the music icons of that period. His photos can be divided into four categories: concert photos, studio photos, portraits and photos made at press conferences. Hanekroot stopped being a professional photographer in 1983 and became an entrepreneur. A few years ago he began to digitize his archives. This led to the publication of Abba..Zappa Seventies Rock Photography (Veenman, 2008) and exhibitions in a.o. Paris, London, Moscow, Tokyo and Amsterdam. Nowadays Gijsbert Hanekroot works mainly as a documentary photographer.