Artist Roundtable: Studio to Stage

Our ongoing exhibition Studio to Stage: Music Photography from the Fifties to the Present, on view at 540 West 25th Street in New York through August 19, examines the past 70 years of music making through the work of 17 photographers and filmmakers. Rarely exhibited together, the images in this exhibition reflect the evolution of music photography and speak to exchanges across different genres, eras, and geographic locations that make music a continuous, boundless, and borderless art form.

This new film features highlights from a recent conversation between Mark Beasley, curatorial director of Pace Live and curator of Studio to Stage, and artists Janette Beckman, Itzel Alejandra Martinez, and Nick Waplington, all of whom are showing work in the exhibition. Here, Beckman, Martinez, and Waplington discuss the histories of their practices and unforgettable experiences photographing musicians, concerts, and scenes at various points in their careers. “For me, any photo I take is a collaboration with a band,” Beckman explains.