Marty Stuart. John R. Cash, Last Portrait, September 8, 2003, 2003. Archival pigment print. © Marty Stuart
I recently was able to interview country music traditionalist Marty Stuart about photography. Stuart, who had a string of country hits in the 1990s and now carries to torch for traditional country and bluegrass music, has been a photographer on the highways and backroads of America since he was a teenager, photographing such legends and luminaries as Bill Monroe and Johnny Cash. (That’s the last photograph taken of The Man in Black, taken by Stuart, just a few days before Cash died in 2003.)
More than 60 of his black & white images are on exhibit at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville. The American Ballads exhibition continues through November 2, 2014.
This link opens a three-page PDF of my story on Stuart and his photographic storytelling that I wrote for the Spring 2014 issue of Sports & Entertainment Nashville Magazine.