Acclaimed photographer and JamBase contributor Michael Weintrob has put out two InstrumentHead books featuring surrealistic portraits of musicians covering their faces with their instruments that capture each artist’s spirit. Weintrob and his InstrumentHead project were the subject of a profile that aired on the latest episode of CBS Sunday Morning.
The Birmingham, Alabama native launched the project while serving as the house photographer in 2000 at the Aggie Theater in Fort Collins, Colorado. “I would go backstage and I would take pictures of the bands and, you know, you’re a photographer, so you know how it’s like to try to get emotion out of people. It’s really difficult, right?” Weintrob explained.
“So, I remember the Derek Trucks Band was performing there that night, and all the guys in the band were backstage and I was about to shoot a portrait of the band, but the bass player wasn’t there,” the photographer added. “The bass player, Todd Smalley, came running down the stairs. He had his bass. I said, ‘I don’t know, man, do something crazy. Put your bass on your shirt.’ So, he puts his bass down his shirt and down his pants. And I took this portrait of them.”
“It wasn’t like a light bulb went off in my head saying, ‘Oh, I’m going to cover these people’s faces with their instruments. This is going to be my project,’” Michael noted. “I didn’t even know that photography projects existed, or art projects existed at that time.”
Weintrob got his start as a youngster. “Before I moved to Colorado, my father gave me a Nikon 4004 camera, and that was the first time I ever had a real kind of camera in my hands,” he recalled. “I remember when I was first starting to take pictures with that camera, it was 1996 and I went to a Blues Traveler concert in Sunrise, Florida. And I was taking photographs of the band. And it was a really wonderful feeling. I felt like I was at the concert, but I was doing my own thing at the concert.”
InstrumentHead was released in 2017. The companion InstrumentHead Revealed followed earlier this year. Watch the feature on Weintrob below:
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