Barry Feinstein

Who was Barry Feinstein?

Barry Feinstein was an American photographer who was reputed to have produced over 500 album covers.

Barry Feinstein began in his youth as a photographer. In 1955 he was engaged as an assistant at Life magazine. He subsequently became a sought-after photographer in Hollywood, where he worked with Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Charlton Heston, Jayne Mansfield, and Steve McQueen. His works, as well as pictures of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, appeared in magazines such as Time, Esquire, and Newsweek.

In the 1960s, Feinstein became known as a photographer in the music scene. He accompanied Bob Dylan on his 1966 tour of England and shot the cover photos of numerous albums, including from Janis Joplin, George Harrison, and the Rolling Stones. In 1974 he again went on tour with Bob Dylan, this time with The Band, around the United States.

An accident in 1993 affected Feinstein's ability to operate cameras. In 2008 he published two books: one contained 23 of his early Hollywood works together with Bob Dylan poems written in 1964, the second showed photos of Dylan's tours. Feinstein's photographs of the 1966 Bob Dylan Tour were exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2009.