Herb Greene Brings the Haight-Ashbury to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts

If you’re in Boston on Tuesday morning, July 11, stop by the Museum of Fine Arts to listen to a rare conversation with photographer Herb Greene, who chronicled the San Francisco music scene of the 1960s as only an insider could. Greene’s photographs were frequently used as central images on rock posters—Wes Wilson placed Greene photographs of Jerry Garcia, Grace Slick, Jefferson Airplane, and the Grateful Dead on several of his early efforts for Bill Graham; Rick Griffin designed posters around Greene photos of the Charlatans for shows produced by Chet Helms. His images also graced album covers, perhaps most famously on “Surrealistic Pillow.” But Greene also documented life on the streets of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood during 1967. His portfolio of these images capture lots of hippies and hippie wannabes, to be sure, but also people who’d obviously been living in the neighborhood for a long time, and appear nonplussed, and even uneasy, by its transformation into a countercultural mecca. You can see 32 of Greene’s photographs at the “The Summer of Love: Photography and Graphic Design,” which continues at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, through October 22. In addition to Greene’s often intimate and candid images, the show features 25 album covers and more than 50 posters. For more information, visit mfa.org.