Glenn & Jerusha

It was April 1988 when the photographer Bill Lemke set up a makeshift studio in a parking lot during a Grateful Dead show at Rosemont Horizon in Chicago. Working with a large-format 4 x 5-inch view camera, he made nearly 160 portraits of concert goers, including Glenn and his daughter Jerusha. In recent years, for his series Deadheads in America Then & Now, Lemke has used social media to locate sitters from decades ago and has re-photographed them in his backyard, in the Catskills.

In this portrait diptych, which spans thirty years, Glenn and Jerusha sit together in front of a painted canvas that resembles a tie-dye backdrop. Their closeness appears to be untouched by time, perhaps a testament to the power of music—and portraiture—to recreate memories. All the while, the photographer reflects upon the differences between the time-consuming process of developing large-format film and the immediacy of digital photography.