"Never try to meet your rock 'n roll heroes," urges Jasen Emmons, Curatorial Director at the Experience Music Project in Seattle. Emmons, who invited rock hero Graham Nash to curate an exhibition of photographs on the subject, goes on to suggest that while most of us will never encounter the royalty of rock, we can still "turn to something that is always available, that will never let you down: the photographs."

A new book just released by Chronicle Books captures an era that was central to Graham Nash's voyage from Blackpool, England to the world's stage, starting with his band The Hollies in the mid-1960s, and a few years later with Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Left to right: Barry Feinstein, Bob Dylan signing a poster at the Olympia Concert Hall, Paris, 1966; Graham Nash, Taj Mahal in performance at the Mariposa Folk Festival, Centre Island, Toronto, Canada, 1970; Chris Stein and Debby Harry of Blondie, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1979. Photographs copyright the artists, courtesy Chronicle Books.

For those who might not know this, Nash took up the camera long before playing guitar, and followed what he calls a parallel career all the time he was creating the music that became synonymous with Woodstock Nation. In the book's Introduction, he tells of the magic he experienced when, at age 10, his father showed him how to use a darkroom. Ever since, he has had his hand in photography as a maker, a collector and a pioneer in the field of digital imaging. Nash Editions, which he co-founded with R. Mac Holbert in 1990, was the first digital fine-art printing studio in the country.

The book is a gallery without walls in more than one sense. While it will serve as the catalog for an upcoming exhibition, it is also presents the world Nash has inhabited, viewed from within. And the photographers presented here make another roster of royalty. Among them are Jim Marshall, Henry Diltz, Anton Corbjin, Annie Leibovitz, Joel Bernstein, Richard Avedon, Mark Seliger, Lynn Goldsmith, Bob Gruen, Dennis Hopper, Pennie Smith, and Jeff Dunas, to name a few. In addition, the book's design gives the photographs, which were separated by the legendary Thomas Palmer, room enough not just to breath, but to leap from the page.

A photograph of The Clash, in a performance at Harvard Square Theater in 1979 by Bob Gruen, shows the front men in perfect symmetry, with the kind of in-your-face attitude that Nash says "screams at you, 'Yes, love is better than hate. Yes, peace is better than war.' And it screams at you that, yes, indeed, the emperor really has no clothes...."

In a 1966 portrait of Bob Dylan by Barry Feinstein, the newly electric Dylan, dressed in clothes fit for an emperor, signs a poster from the year before. His reflection in the mirror becomes a metaphor for his reinvention, while the face on the poster represents the working-class folkie hero that Dylan first showed to the world.

The book includes iconic images from the annals of rock, such as Barrie Wentzell's shot of Elton John in his 4-inch silver platforms, airborne over his piano; Annie Leibovitz's portrait of John Lennon (naked) and Yoko Ono (clothed), photographed the day he was shot in front of the Dakota, and which appeared on the December 5, 1980 cover of Rolling Stone; and Henry Diltz's outtake of Crosby, Stills and Nash from the shoot for their 1969 debut album.

But what sets this collection apart from other fine books on rock & roll are the photographs that capture private moments in lives lived to the max, but which were often grueling and downright boring. In 1978 Lynn Goldsmith photographed Mick Jagger warming up backstage for a performance; caught unawares, his skinny frame and strange attire in no way suggest the power Jagger exerted onstage. There's an incredibly fierce portrait of Jimi Hendrix by Jim Marshall, shot while Hendrix performed to an empty stadium during a sound check for the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. Viewers of this page will be left with an impression of the man that could never be had at a live concert.

Nash's connection to the photographers, many of whom became his personal friends, brings a kind of sensitivity to the selection that makes the book more than the sum of its parts. The trouble is that r&r aficionados will have to wait until mid-February for the gallery with walls, when a touring exhibition of the photographs, which are being printed by Nash Editions, opens in Seattle.

Taking Aim: Unforgettable Rock 'N Roll Photographs Selected by Graham Nash is now in stores. The exhibition opens on February 6, 2010 at The Experience Music Project in Seatlle, Washington.

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