with special guest Dennis McNally
Sun. May 31st, 6pm
Bay Area photographer Susana Millman is best known for her photography of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead from the mid-80s through later jam band incarnations and generations (like Sam Grisman and Grahame Lesh). In addition to shooting world music, especially Zakir Hussain and Indian classical musicians, she has documented dance for the Mark Morris and his group, and travelled to shoot religious art and architecture in Asia.
Her intentions are to capture the essence of a moment and leave a visually evocative memory of the experience. She loves the transcendent moments when she and her camera are in union with the subject, whether it is the meaningful glance between musicians or the peak of a dancer’s elevation.
Susana has written a coffee table photo memoir, Alive with the Dead: A Fly on the Wall with a Camera, which was awarded a medal by the Independent Publishers Association in 2016. The second edition, now virtually sold out, was published by San Francisco’s own Last Gasp Press in 2020. The book’s photos provide an up-close and personal look at the band in its middle age and after, a product of the unusually intimate access to the band’s scene she developed as a friend of Garcia’s, which is why he came to play matchmaker and then walk her down the aisle at her wedding with Dead biographer and publicist Dennis McNally in 1985.