ArtistAmerican
Ed Finnell
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The Los Angeles Forum in Inglewood was one of the great arenas of 1970s rock, and Ed Finnell was there for almost all of it. Born in Los Angeles in 1956, he came to photography early - around age ten or eleven - and by the time he shot his first major concert in June 1972, The Rolling Stones at the Forum, the direction of his work was set. He was sixteen years old.
What followed was an unusually sustained engagement with a single subject. Through the remainder of the decade, Finnell photographed virtually every significant rock act that came through southern California: Led Zeppelin, The Who, David Bowie, Neil Young, Paul McCartney and Wings, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Jethro Tull, Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, Rod Stewart and The Faces. He shot with Nikon equipment and learned darkroom craft from a friend who gave him early access to a private lab. The technical challenge of concert photography - fast action, dramatic and constantly shifting stage lighting, no second chances - suited his instincts.
In the mid-1970s, a connection through the Pirate Sound Rehearsal Space in Hollywood opened professional doors. There Finnell encountered acts preparing for tours, began selling them prints, and was eventually hired as an official tour photographer. His photographs appeared in magazines, tour programs, and liner notes worldwide. Most durably, his images appeared on four Rolling Stones album covers - a record of commercial placement that few concert photographers of his generation can match.
David Bowie was, by Finnell's own account, his favourite subject. Bowie's theatrical productions were lit with a generosity toward photographers that most rock acts did not offer, and the results show it. The image of Bowie as The Thin White Duke at the Los Angeles Forum on February 9, 1976 - stripped down, severe, lit like a Weimar-era stage production - is among the most reproduced concert photographs of the period. The Ziggy Stardust-era shots from the Long Beach Arena in March 1973 are equally striking.
Over nearly five decades, Finnell estimates he accumulated close to 200,000 concert negatives. He has continued to print from these originals in an analog darkroom, producing gelatin silver prints and signed, numbered editions - typically limited to fifty - that represent the full archive's most refined output. In recent years he relocated from Los Angeles to Sweden, where he has connected with Stockholm's Oak Island Gallery. In February 2025, a body of previously unpublished Led Zeppelin photographs - including images from the 1975 Physical Graffiti tour and the 1977 Presence tour - was exhibited at the gallery, timed to coincide with the Stockholm premiere of a major Zeppelin documentary.
On the Swedish auction market, Finnell's prints have appeared at Stockholms Auktionsverk Sickla and Auctionet, accounting for all 11 items in the Auctionist database. Results range from around 2,000 to 6,100 SEK, with the top result for a signed Neil Young print from the 1976 Fall Tour at the LA Forum. Subjects spanning Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Rod Stewart, and David Bowie feature in the sold lots, reflecting both the breadth of his archive and the appetite for 1970s rock material among Scandinavian collectors.