The Photographs of Kate Simon

Featuring the definitive images of Bob Marley, 1975-1981, and the golden age of roots reggae. With text by Kate Simon and contributions from a host of Bob Marley’s friends and fellow musicians. Including: Junior Marvin, Chris Blackwell, Patti Smith, Spencer Davis, Neville Garrick, Danny Sims, and Don Letts.

In the latter half of the 70′s, the ears of the world were tuned to the sounds emanating from a small island in the Caribbean called Jamaica. Sounds that would change the shape of music for ever. There was the innovative production techniques of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry; the toasting of U-Roy, Dillinger and Big Youth that would come to inform rap; and loudest of all, there was the voice of the underdog and sufferahs everywhere, the Soul Rebel, Bob Marley. While the world listened from a distance, Kate Simon was there to capture reggae’s most famous protagonists and most significant moments.In 1975 she was at the Lyceum Ballroom to catch a Marley performance that would become legendary through the album Live! The following year, poolside with Chris Blackwell at Jamaica’s Sheraton hotel, she took the portrait of Bob Marley that would grace the Kaya album. Travelling with the Wailers through Europe during the 1977 Exodus tour, she captured their scintillating live performances, their dedication to the music and their joyous celebration of the Rastafarian faith. Off stage she found them relaxed and often playful, with Bob never far away from a guitar, a spliff or a football. In 1978 she was there when Bob famously united opposing politicians Michael Manley and Edward Seaga on stage at the One Love Peace Concert. Then in 1981 she rode with the funeral cortège from Kingston to St Anns and Bob Marley’s final resting place.

Her archive of Wailers footage is complemented with definitive images of the likes of Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, Big Youth, Sly and Robbie, Toots Hibbert, Culture, Jacob Miller and many more.
Scores of musicians, acquaintances and aficionados have contributed text for the book, including Wailers’ guitarist Junior Marvin, ex-manager and publisher Danny Sims, art director Neville Garrick, cook and close friend Antonio ‘Gilly’ Gilbert and the man who brought the group to the world, Chris Blackwell.

Printed with the lavish style and attention to detail that Genesis are famous for, it will provide a unique snapshot of Jamaica at its most musically fertile and stand as a fine tribute to the first and only third world superstar
‘Kate Simon’s pictures have always been icons for me. They were among the very first pictures that I saw when I started to get into reggae after ’73 and Bob had a special fondness for her. She knew how to be unobtrusive and charming, interesting and interested, and she gained access that very, very few other people ever had to Bob. Most people didn’t get what she got and she got some unique moments. Among her most important pictures are the ones in Heidelburg, in an old aircraft hangar that had become an artificial limb factory; and this was at a time when they were trying to get Bob to have his foot amputated after the melanoma was discovered in his right foot. There’s a sequence of three that are just blood-curdling images, Bob just looking at the bottom half of a leg standing on a table, seeing a potential future for himself, and she caught it. I don’t know whether Bob would have allowed a male photographer to get that close.

There’s the picture that was chosen as one of the 100 images of the twentieth century, the Kaya cover, that’s also the logo for the Bob Marley Museum itself. That resonates so strongly, because it’s Bob still healthy in ’76, with this radiant smile and this beatific expression. It has well deserved its reputation as an iconographic image of Bob Marley. I think she’s one of the best photographers in America and the fact that she was willing to turn her attention to something that would yield very little financial reward – documenting reggae in the ’70s – speaks very highly of her as a woman of taste, sophistication and generosity. I’m proud to call her my friend.’ Roger Steffens, curator of the Reggae Archives