Selby Gardens exhibit showcases rock 'n' roses

A visitor exploring the oversized photos indoors and outside at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens could assume that the exhibition, “Shared Light: Lynn Goldsmith,” is about flowers. But according to Goldsmith, the show is about friendship.

Unless you’re an aficionado of photography or rock ’n’ roll, you might not immediately recognize Goldsmith’s name. But her images of artists such as The Rolling Stones, Grand Funk Railroad and Bruce Springsteen are in books, private collections and museums.

Her long creative collaboration with punk rocker and poet Patti Smith, Selby’s inaugural artist in residence, is the thread that runs through “Shared Light.”

On a recent morning tour, it’s immediately apparent that Goldsmith is the cool kid in the group. The blue jeans she’s wearing are embellished with pockets, straps and rings. When someone asks her where she bought the distinctive denim, she steers them toward the website of Tripp NYC. “The designer is a friend of mine,” Goldsmith says.

The brief exchange underscores the importance of friendship to Goldsmith, something she mentions several times during the course of an hour.

Asked when she and Smith met, Goldsmith says neither of them can remember exactly, but that it was in the mid-1970s, around the time Smith’s debut studio album, “Horses,” was released.

Goldsmith recalls that she got a phone call from Smith, who said, “So-and-so says this about you. Therefore, I think you must be great!” The two have been friends ever since.

In 1977, Goldsmith photographed Smith for the cover of her album, “Easter.” The photo ultimately chosen shows Smith with her hands tugging on her hair. The album symbolized a resurrection of sorts for Smith, who had broken her neck and was regaining movement in her arms.

Photo by Monica Gagnier

During the tour at Selby Gardens, Goldsmith recalled how she was inspired to photograph Smith using flowers that she had left over from another assignment. 

“Shared Light” contains a photo tribute to Goldsmith’s friendship with Smith, through a series of photographs in the Richard and Ellen Sandor Museum of Botany and the Arts. In the gallery that Goldsmith referred to as the “purple room,” there are photos of Smith taken in the mid-1970s. 

“The reason why they’re chosen is because it establishes that timeline of a friendship. For me, friendship goes through many of the same changes as the life of a flower,” says Goldsmith.

The two longtime friends recently collaborated on a luxe coffee table book published by Taschen, called “Before Easter After” ($1,000) that includes hundreds of unseen photos taken by Goldsmith and previously private texts by Smith. There is also a more affordable edition published by Rizzoli ($65).

A Stones fan from the start

Goldsmith got her start as a rock ’n’ roll photographer early. She was living with her mother and stepfather in Miami when she had the opportunity to shoot The Beatles in the lobby of a hotel. Goldsmith, who was 16 at the time, was not impressed by the Fab Four; she was a Rolling Stones fan. At the time, “you had to choose between the two,” she told the University of Michigan alumni magazine.

Goldsmith’s creative, sometimes unconventional, approach was evident even then. She chose to photograph little more than the Beatles’ boots.

A native of Detroit, Goldsmith is the daughter of an engineer and an interior decorator. When she was studying English and psychology at the U of M in Ann Arbor, Smith became friends with a fellow student named James Osterberg. The world would later know him as the rock star Iggy Pop.

Goldsmith’s trajectory in the music business began when she was hired as director of publicity, marketing and advertising at Elektra Records in 1969. That led to a celebrated career photographing and managing rock stars.

Though it may seem tame by today’s standards, Goldsmith’s cover for Grand Funk Railroad’s album, “We’re An American Band,” was controversial at the time. It showed the band members in the nude among bales of hay.

Although the huge photos at Selby Gardens appear to be taken in the wild, that’s not the case.

Smith used to rise early and go to the Chelsea Flower Market in New York City, where restaurants, hotels and decorators procure fresh flowers each morning. There she would roam, taking close-ups of flowers using a Nikon camera with a single 50-millimeter lens.

“New York is oftentimes not the easiest place to live, but when you get up and go to the flower market, it’s well worth it,” Goldsmith says. “You’d think people wouldn’t be happy at 5 a.m., but they are. The flower market is a place where people are so kind to each other — really nice — and everything smells good.”

These solitary expeditions with a single camera and available light were a marked contrast to Goldsmith’s life as a studio photographer of boldface names. 

“Portraiture involves having assistants and makeup people, the stylist, the publicist, the manager. It’s like a lot of people. I usually have a tray in the studio with different cameras on it,” she says. 

Goldsmith may have a low-key, boho vibe, but she isn’t someone with whom you want to tangle. 

In addition to being a trailblazer as a rock ’n’ roll manager and photographer, she isn’t afraid to stand up for her intellectual property. 

When Andy Warhol (or perhaps one of his assistants) used her 1981 photos of the musician Prince to make a series of silkscreens, Goldsmith took her case all the way to the Supreme Court and won.

After the justices ruled 7-2 in Goldsmith’s favor, a settlement was reached in May 2024. 

The Andy Warhol Foundation agreed to drop its claims, pay her legal fees and compensate her for using her images.

When she and Smith were working on the book “Before Easter After,” they decided they needed to take a photo of Smith’s shoes that her mother had donated to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. 

Photo by Matthew Holler

The Cleveland-based museum was reluctant to part with the footwear, even for a photo shoot. “So we both got on the phone and I was like, ‘I’ll never loan you anything again,'” Goldsmith says. “So they brought the shoes, but they would only bring them to Patti’s house.” 

Although she now lives in Nashville, Goldsmith considers herself an honorary Floridian because she went to high school in Miami. “Back then, the only air conditioning was in the library, so I read a lot,” she says.

Despite her Florida roots, Goldsmith has never photographed orchids in the wild. 

She noted that in her world travels, she was impressed by the landscape of Argentina.

Goldsmith chose the photos to exhibit outside and decided where to place them using video sent to her by David Berry, Selby’s chief curator.

“Dave generously walked it (the path) for me on video, so that I could get a feel of where the path was taking you and what you were seeing along the path,” Goldsmith says. “These banyan trees are just extraordinary. The only thing that seemed to be (missing) was color.”

As she took visitors on a tour of her work that spans roughly five decades, Goldsmith waxed philosophical. Through her recent book with Smith and the “Shared Light” exhibition, she has been “able to bring forward the kind of fragility and endurance that flowers and friendships have in common.”

Whether it’s the beauty of nature or a long creative partnership, Goldsmith takes nothing for granted.