Dylan painting facing some pier pressure
• They are supposed to be Bob Dylan’s chronicle of life on the road, a series of paintings capturing the essence of America.
But among the images of diners and hot dog stands, New York streets and Route 66, one picture might be a little less American than the rest. A watercolour that Dylan claims to be a depiction of Norfolk, Va., looks suspiciously like the Blackpool seaside resort in northern England.
A British amateur photographer has pointed out striking similarities between a picture he took of Blackpool’s North Pier in 2009 and Dylan’s work.
The photographer, who runs a popular blog called Diamond Geezer, has been taking pictures of British towns and cities for over a decade and uploading them to photo-sharing site Flickr.
He gave the Blackpool album little more thought until he was contacted this week by an Internet sleuth who had been researching Dylan’s most recent exhibition, The Beaten Path, which has just closed at Lon- don’s Halcyon Gallery.
“The Norfolk, Virginia, image piqued the interest of a Dutch lady called Hilda, intrigued as to whether it came from ( a) film or from a photo of a landmark elsewhere,” Diamond Geezer wrote on his blog. “She spent almost 24 hours researching piers across the USA, until eventually spotting no, it was the North Pier in Blackpool.
“Another researcher then noted that my Flickr photo was the definitive source image, and got in touch with me to check, and that’s how I found out.
“The illumination’s different, but the alignment of the pier and lampposts is identical, as if the artist were standing precisely where I was standing six years earlier.”
He pointed out that there is a pier in Norfolk, Va., but it l ooks nothing l i ke the one in the image. Dylan in- cluded several versions of the pier in his exhibition, including one with a couple standing on the boardwalk.
The photographer said he was not angry but “astonished” by the appropriation of his work and by the singer “telling everyone it’s a location somewhere else.” He added: “This is the actual Bob Dylan we’re talking about, the 2016 Nobel Laureate.”
Perhaps Dylan drew on memories of Blackpool — he played three sold- out shows at the Winter Gardens in 2013.
But he gave no clues to his inspiration in the notes accompanying the exhibition. He wrote: “The common theme of these works ( has) something to do with the American landscape — how you see it while criss- crossing the land and seeing it for what it’s worth. Staying out of the mainstream and travelling the back roads, free born style.”
A spokesperson for the Halcyon Gallery said: “There is no attempt on behalf of the artist to name the scenes accurately. While the essence of the exhibition is a journey through America, the compositions of the paintings are based on a wide variety of sources including archival and historic images.”
MY FLICKR PHOTO WAS THE DEFINITIVE SOURCE.