Baron Wolman

Baron Wolman (born June 25, 1937) is an American photographer best known for his work in the late 1960s for the music magazine Rolling Stone, becoming the magazine's first Chief Photographer from 1967 until late 1970.

Wolman's professional photographic career began in West Berlin in the 1960s where he was stationed with the military.[2] From Berlin he sold his first photo essay, images of life behind the then-new Berlin Wall. He then decided to become a photo-journalist. After his discharge he moved from Germany to Los Angeles and then to San Francisco then to New Mexico. It was in San Francisco, in April, 1967, that Wolman, then 30, met a 21-year-old Cal Berkeley student and freelance writer named Jann Wenner. Wolman had been photographing rock bands and Wenner had plans to form a new kind of music periodical with San Francisco Chronicle music writer, Ralph Gleason. Wolman agreed to join the new periodical, Rolling Stone, and work for free. He also insisted on ownership of all the photos he took for Rolling Stone, giving the magazine unlimited use of the pictures. Wolman began working for Rolling Stone from its first issue was published, and continued for another three years. Because of Wolman's virtually unlimited access to his subjects, his photographs of Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones, Frank Zappa, the Who, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, Iggy Pop, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, Phil Spector, Jim Morrison, Ike & Tina Turner, Peter Rowan and other musicians were the graphic centerpieces of Rolling Stone's layout.

For the most part, Wolman eschewed the studio and never used on-camera strobes, preferring informal portraiture, a style appropriate to both the musicians he was documenting as well as the audience for these photographs. Wolman's approach was gradually supplanted by highly stylized, mostly studio image makers, whose pictures were published only upon the approval of the musician and of his or her management. This evolution can be traced on the subsequent covers of Rolling Stone through the years.