Jump to content

Lisa Law

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lisa Law
Lisa Law, Madrid, New Mexico,
12 October 2013
Born
Lisa Jo Bachelis[1][2]

(1943-03-08) March 8, 1943 (age 81)[2]
Los Angeles County, California[2]
SpouseTom Law[1]
ChildrenPilar Law[3]
RelativesJohn Phillip Law[1]

Lisa Law is an American photographer and filmmaker of 1960s counterculture best known, with Peter Whiterabbit, for photographing the 1969 Woodstock festival, where she also organised food.[4][5][6][7] She was also involved in the organisation of the Woodstock '99 festival.[8]

Early life

[edit]

Lisa Bachelis was born to Selma (née Mikels), an attorney, and Lee Bachelis, a furrier.[9] She has two brothers, Gregory Frank and Guy[9][2] and she grew up in Burbank, California.[10][8] Bachelis attended John Burroughs High School in Burbank, Galileo High School in San Francisco, California, the College of Marin in Marin County, California, and San Francisco City College.[9][11][12]

Career

[edit]

In Los Angeles in 1964, Bachelis became a personal assistant to Frank Werber, the manager of The Kingston Trio. He gave her a Honeywell Pentax camera[10][13][11] and she began taking pictures of the musicians in the Bay Area and Los Angeles music scenes.

In 1965, Bachelis met Tom Law, the road manager for Peter, Paul and Mary.[11] Law, his brother John Phillip Law, and their friend, Jack Simons, owned a four-story mansion in Los Feliz, known as the Castle.[11][14] Bachelis and Law married the same year, and she moved into the mansion, where she took photographs of visiting musicians and artists, including Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan and Barry McGuire.[8][11]

After living in Yelapa, Mexico, for a short time in 1966, Law chronicled the lives of the flower children in Haight Ashbury.[15] She carried her camera wherever she went, to the Human Be-In, the anti-Vietnam march in San Francisco, the Monterey Pop Festival, and meetings of The Diggers.[8][16] Law then joined those who migrated to the communes of New Mexico in the late Sixties and early Seventies.[17] She has gone on to specialize in documenting homeless people in San Francisco, the El Salvadorian's resistance against military oppression, and the Navajo and Hopi nations struggling to preserve their ancestral religious sites, traditions, and land.

She and her former husband, Tom Law, lived together on a farm in Truchas, New Mexico, for 12 years and had four children, including photographer Pilar Law.[17] They divorced in 1977.[3][8]

Law moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. She has been involved in the building of the El Museo de Historia, Arte y Cultura de Yelapa museum in Yelapa, Mexico.[15]

Woodstock

[edit]

At the 1969 Woodstock festival, Law asked the festival organizers for $3,000 to buy rolled oats, bulgur wheat, wheat germ, dried apricots, currants, almonds, soy sauce, and honey to make muesli.[18][19] Volunteers fed around 130,000 people with Dixie cups.[8][18][19][20]

Law was also involved in organising the Woodstock '99 festival, and appears in the documentary series Trainwreck: Woodstock '99 where she talked about the difference between the two festivals.[8]

Works

[edit]
  • Flashing on the Sixties, Squarebooks, Santa Rosa, CA, 1987[18]
  • Interviews with Icons: Flashing on the Sixties, Lumen Books, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 2000
  • Beneath the Diamond Sky: Haight-Ashbury 1965-1970, Barney Hoskins, Simon & Schuster Editions, 1997

Film

[edit]
  • Flashing on the Sixties: A tribal document by Lisa Law, Flashback Productions Ltd. 1994[18]

CD cover photographs

[edit]
  • Dezeo: Jewish Music From Spain by Consuelo Luz, Wagram Music, 2000

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c "Lisa Law: The Castle". americanhistory.si.edu. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  2. ^ a b c d "Lisa Jo Bachelis, Born 03/08/1943 in California". CaliforniaBirthIndex.org. Retrieved March 27, 2022. Lisa Jo Bachelis was born on March 8, 1943 in Los Angeles County, California. Her father's last name is Bachelis, and her mother's maiden name is Mikels.
  3. ^ a b Mehrotra, Kriti (August 3, 2022). "Where is Mike Lang's Assistant Pilar Law Now?". The Cinemaholic. Retrieved June 25, 2023.
  4. ^ "Lisa Law: Organizing Woodstock". National Museum of American History. Retrieved June 25, 2023.
  5. ^ Bramen, Lisa. "Woodstock - How to Feed 400,000 Hungry Hippies". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  6. ^ Amlen, Deb (August 14, 2019). "'What We Have in Mind Is Breakfast in Bed for 400,000'". The New York Times. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  7. ^ "The Foodline - Woodstock and Granola". woodstockpreservation.org. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  8. ^ a b c d e f g Vanapalli, Viswa (August 3, 2022). "Where is Woodstock Photographer Lisa Law Now?". The Cinemaholic. Retrieved June 25, 2023.
  9. ^ a b c "Law, Lisa, 1967". Social Networks and Archival Context. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  10. ^ a b "Lisa Law: Photographic Beginnings". americanhistory.si.edu. Archived from the original on July 15, 2016. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  11. ^ a b c d e "Nostalgic Flashback to the 1960s : Photographer's Candid Stills Chronicle Life as a Hippie". Los Angeles Times. December 17, 1987. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  12. ^ Livingston, Joan (August 8, 2009). "Lisa Law: Documenting the Woodstock Generation in photos". The Taos News. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  13. ^ "Lisa Law". sfae.com. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  14. ^ "Lisa Law". Annenberg Space for Photography. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  15. ^ a b "Lisa Law Built a Museum in Mexico". Santa Fe Reporter. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  16. ^ "Lisa Law: The Counterculture". americanhistory.si.edu. Retrieved June 25, 2023.
  17. ^ a b Social Networks and Archival Context Cooperative website
  18. ^ a b c d "Flashing back to Woodstock". edition.cnn.com. August 17, 2004. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  19. ^ a b "Lisa Law: Organizing Woodstock". americanhistory.si.edu. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
  20. ^ "Woodstock at 50: Good-for-You Groovy In a Dixie Cup". Newberry Magazine. Retrieved March 28, 2022.
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lisa_Law&oldid=1244229880"