During the extraordinary rise of popular culture and counterculture in the Sixties, Jim Marshall seemed to be everywhere that mattered.

Called the most celebrated and prolific photographer of the 20th century, Marshall is widely known for his iconic music photography. Because Jim lived life alongside his subjects and never betrayed their trust, he was granted second-to-none access. His images of the Monterey Pop Festival, which chronicled the breakout performances of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding, were woven into the lore of the era. Marshall also photographed unguarded moments of his subjects, such as Janis Joplin lounging backstage with a bottle of Southern Comfort and Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix strolling the Monterey Pop Festival fairgrounds. Johnny Cash’s groundbreaking concerts for prison reform at Folsom Prison and San Quentin Prison were captured in the lens of Marshall’s camera. In a career that ended with his untimely death in 2010, Marshall shot more than 500 album covers; his photographs are in private and museum collections around the world.

Posthumously, Jim Marshall holds the distinction of being the first and only photographer to be presented with the Recording Academy’s Trustee Award, an honorary Grammy presented to individuals for nonperformance contributions to the music industry. The award was bestowed on the Jim Marshall estate in 2014 in recognition of Marshall ‘s unprecedented chronicling of music history from the 1950s through the early 2000s.

Marshall saw himself as an anthropologist and a journalist, visually recording the changing times and explosion of creativity and celebrity of the ’60s and ’70s. He immersed himself in that world more than any other photographer and, in doing so, emerged an icon for a new generation of music, art, and photography lovers. His images employed a minimum of artifice to document people and events. Not interested in conventional beauty or technical perfection, Marshall sought to capture character: the simple truth of whom a person is. His photo essays on civil rights and political unrest are a testament to his concern for the human condition.

Jim Marshall Photography LLC was established with the primary goal to preserve and protect Marshall’s extraordinary legacy as a discerning photojournalist and a pioneer of rock-and-roll photography. The estate is continuing the legacy of Jim Marshall through sales and licensing, exhibitions, publishing, and the development of a comprehensive catalog as a reference for the totality of his life’s work.