Fine art photographer Dr. Richard Ehrlich captures musicians in the act of listening
In the unsparing portrait — sharply focused, dramatically lit — Roger Daltrey isn't gazing into the camera. According to the photographer who took it, the bright blue eyes of the rock icon are in fact looking back over a life. "This guy is the lead singer of the Who, and he wanted to hear Edith Piaf's 'Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien' while I took his picture," marvels Dr. Richard Ehrlich '59, M.D. '63. "And he told me that it's because he's never regretted anything he's ever done."
That connection between music and the inner life is both the inspiration and the subject of Dr. Ehrlich's new book, "Face the Music," which collects portraits of 41 musicians as they listen to songs of their choosing. A fine art photographer whose work is in the permanent collections of such institutions as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Dr. Ehrlich is also a practicing urologist known for his work in pediatric surgery. "I think that there's a meticulousness in both surgery and fine art photography that you can see in my work," he says, "But that's really the only connection." Although his medical and photographic careers have largely run on separate tracks, they came together in conversations with a patient whose child has autism — interactions that ultimately inspired his book. "Music has proved to be central to autism treatment," observes Dr. Ehrlich, a professor emeritus of urology at University of California, Los Angeles' David Geffen School of Medicine. "It can allow us to experience great depth of feeling, and I wondered if photographing the people who are most passionate about music — musicians themselves — would capture something of that experience."
The result is "Face the Music," whose sales will benefit the UCLA Center for Autism Research and Treatment. Released in 2015 by celebrated art publisher Steidl, it boasts a table of contents that reads like the marquee at the greatest — and most eclectic — music festival in history. Quincy Jones, Ringo Starr, Emmylou Harris, and Iggy Pop all sat down in front of Dr. Ehrlich's digital camera. He caught Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich rocking out to Rage Against the Machine and punk star Johnny Rotten still rocking a Mohawk. Dr. Ehrlich's tender photo of Dave Brubeck listening to his sons performing as the Brubeck Brothers is one of the last portraits taken of the jazz great before his death in 2012.
Dr. Ehrlich’s portraits of opera singer Renée Fleming (top) and producer Quincy Jones. All photos provided by Dr. Richard Ehrlich
It took Ehrlich five years and countless conversations with publicists, agents and artists to assemble the range he wanted for "Face the Music." Some of the musicians who appear in the book were won over by the project's charitable aim, while others were intrigued by its artistic ambitions. A handful, including Philip Glass, wanted to contemplate their own music, but most chose to listen to other people's songs during the shoots. Herbie Hancock teared up as he heard his mentor, Miles Davis, on the classic track "Lament." Some — like Roseanne Cash choosing the folk rock band the Decemberists — showed the grace of a veteran honoring younger artists. Sometimes, it was hard for Dr. Ehrlich to see the connection. "Honestly, I'd never heard of anything that Johnny Rotten picked," he admits. But in every case, says Dr. Ehrlich, "If they were willing to sit down in front of the camera at all, they were really open, really into it."
Now Dr. Ehrlich is engaged in a related project with a very different approach and a group of subjects: He's using one of only four large-format (20 by 24 inches) Polaroid cameras left in the world to create portraits of children with autism. The shift from digital to old-school technology, and from the famous to the unknown, is typical of Dr. Ehrlich's unconventional, wide-ranging photography career. As a kid growing up in New York City, he was so passionate about the art that he had his own darkroom — but he gave it up, first to play baseball and then to earn both his undergraduate and medical degrees at Cornell.
Fifteen years ago, Dr. Ehrlich took up photography again in earnest, and he quickly built a reputation in fine art circles with work ranging from portraits of Mexican lucha libre wrestlers to abstract images inspired by sunsets in Malibu, where he now lives. Dr. Ehrlich recently donated 10 large-format photographs from the latter series, "The Other Side of the Sky," to Weill Cornell Medicine in memory of his late childhood friend Stephen Weiss, a longtime member and chairman of the Cornell University Board of Trustees and founding chairman of the Weill Cornell Medicine Board of Overseers; they're now on view in the Belfer Research Building. The full range of Ehrlich's work can been seen at his website, ehrlichphotography.com. "Some people say that, just like in music, you need to develop a signature style in photography," he says. "You hear a lot of the musicians who appear in this book — Herb Alpert when he picks up a trumpet, for example — and you know that it can't be anyone but them. But now that I'm immersed in photography, the next project is always something new."
— C. A. Carlson
This story first appeared in Weill Cornell Medicine, Vol. 15, No.1.