Over
seventy-five of the most candid photos of Bob Dylan ever published,
collected here for the first time.
In August 1964, twenty-one-year-old photographer
Douglas R. Gilbert, on assignment for Look magazine, journeyed
to the then-obscure upstate New York hamlet of Woodstock to photograph
an up-and-coming folk singer named Bob Dylan.
Just twenty-three years old, Dylan had already composed
a striking body of work, including Blowin’ in the
Wind, With God on Our Side, My Back
Pages, and many others. Even so, his best-known songs had
been hits for other artists, and he himself was still relatively
unknown.

All that was about to change. For more than a week,
Gilbert photographed a surprisingly open Bob Dylan, smiling and
relaxed among friends like musician John Sebastian and poet Allen
Ginsberg.
Following Dylan from Woodstock to Greenwich Village
to the Newport Folk Festival, Gilbert captured Dylan in his many
guises, from the budding family man to Village bohemian to spellbinding
performer.
To Gilbert’s dismay, Look magazine deemed
Dylan’s appearance “too scruffy” for a family
magazine, and the images remained unpublished and unseen, until
now.
Just a few months after these images were taken,
Dylan would undergo striking stylistic and personal changes, and
render himself inaccessible to media except under very controlled
circumstances.
Forever Young captures
a young Dylan in the last days of his innocence. Rarely have we
seen the camera-shy, taciturn singer seeming so comfortable in
his own skin.
Featuring veteran music journalist Dave Marsh’s
insightful text, and with a foreword by John Sebastian, Forever
Young unforgettably captures a pivotal time in Bob Dylan’s
extraordinary career—the time when he began transforming
not just folk but all of popular music. |