Self-Portrait, Plaza Hotel, NYC

While best known as a founding musician of the folk band Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Graham Nash also developed a successful career as a photographer. Influenced by the work of Diane Arbus, Lewis Hine, W. Eugene Smith, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, Nash captures dynamic portraits of family and friends, gritty images of life on the road, and revealing self-portraits that often depict him reflected in either windows or mirrors. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he recalls the details around this particularly intimate self-portrait: “That was taken in my suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. I think it was August of 1974. We were coming to the end of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young reunion tour. And with all due respect, it was fucking crazy. There was [sic] so many drugs, and it was so chaotic. I needed to find an inner peace within myself, so I started to draw in a book, and I filled it with drawings. I'm drawing in the bathroom here. I saw myself in that little pull-out mirror for shaving and I knew it was a great image.” To Nash, wielding the camera is akin to making music; it is about a complete and utter engagement with the world around him and his place in it.