Pioneer Rolling Stone photographer Baron Wolman created these fine art photo posters to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock. Run in a Limited Edition of 300, each is printed on a thick rag fiber stock, individually hand-signed by the photographer.
By August 15, 1969, hundreds of thousands of people had flocked to upstate New York to attend Woodstock, the epic 3-day music festival that was said to be the capstone of a cultural movement. The world had never seen anything like it. Sam Yasgur convinced his father Max to allow the event to be held on their 600 acre farm in Bethel, New York. Most attendees didn't buy tickets, so the promoters didn't make any money until the movie and record were released. The biggest and best bands of the era played day and night to the lucky folks who made history just by being there. 20-mile traffic jams, heavy rain, mud, and insufficient food and accommodations did nothing to mar the collective, peace-loving spirit of the happening. It boasted scorching, legendary performances, like The Who's reflective "See Me, Feel Me" as the sun rose, Janis Joplin belting out "Piece of my Heart" to a crowd of half a million, and Jimi Hendrix's incendiary, distorted version of "The Star Spangled Banner" to a relatively empty field on the very last day of Woodstock. The world still hasn't fully recovered, and probably never will.
Settling in Haight-Ashbury in the 60's, Wolman was surrounded by Janis and the Grateful Dead in close-by digs. Wolman was soon accompanying journalist Jann Wenner to the now famous and genre-defining Mills College conference on rock music. Wenner happened to be the founder of Rolling Stone magazine. He liked Wolman's style, offered him a job and Wolman launched as the first official document-er of the new psychedelic age. Beginning with the magazine's opening issue, Wolman's photographs were windows on the parade of the different, the delightful and the doomed, and his pictures became the gold standard by which rock photography would be measured.