Clinch Hits

ROCK PHOTOGRAPHY'S NEWEST STAR SHINES IN D.C.

Danny Clinch, rock photographer, is on a roll. For a decade now, magazine spreads and CD covers have carried his gritty, off-kilter pictures reinforcing the raw personae of bands such as Public Enemy and Urge Overkill. But Clinch, never one to chill, has been cranking it up to 11 lately. This summer he went on tour with Sting, Radiohead, and the Dave Matthews Band. This fall he mounts his firstever solo exhibition at Washington, D.C.'s hippest photo venue, the Govinda Gallery. Raised in the streetwise school of Robert Frank and Danny Lyon, Clinch, 37, is known for his high-impact black-and-white studies of music men. At the Govinda show, his portraits of Junior Wells, Tupac Shakur, and Pavement's Stephen Malkmus have the resonance of power chords; a fringe of Clinch snapshots, thumbtacked along each wall, provides a snaking bass line. Together, the pictures exhilarate like the spleefy blur out a tour-bus window. Next up: the photographer's debut as director. Premiering early next year in college-town theaters and on Virgin DVD is Pleasure and Pain, Clinch's feature-length biographical film on Ben Harper, rock shaman of the Innocent Criminals. Like the chimerical Harper rifling through his arsenal of obscure guitars, Clinch uses super-8, 16-mm. Bolex, and digital as he updates some of the best elements of rock-doc verite: candid backstage camera (Don't Look Back, Truth or Dare], home-movie farce (A Hard Day's Night), midnight confession interwoven with live performance (The Last Waltz). Zip down to D.C.—or your local DVD dealer—and catch the buzz.

DAVID FRIEND