Just a Snapshot Before I Go

Most folks know Graham Nash as the dulcet tenor of Crosby, Stills & Nash. Less well-known is Graham Nash, the photographer and co-owner with R. Mac Holbert, above left, of a cutting-edge digital photographic printing company, Nash Editions in Manhattan Beach. Its state-of-the-art high-resolution machines are to PC desktop printing what a Ferrari is to Rent-a-Wreck.

Last month, Nash Editions strutted its digital stuff in a show of works by photographer Stephen Wilkes at the Patricia Correia Gallery in Santa Monica.

Nash talked with us from “a little tiny island in the South Pacific,” where, of course, he is shooting lots of pictures.

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Why photography?

I was 10 when my father introduced me to photography. We were a very poor family, and my father’s great pleasure was to take the kids to the zoo and shoot pictures. He would use my bedroom as a darkroom. It was complete magic to me.

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I heard there was some tragedy in connection with photography in your family.

There was. One day [the police] came and informed my father that the camera he had bought from a friend at work had been stolen by that friend. And that he’d better give them the name of his friend. He would not do that, and they put him in jail for a year. And he died at 46.

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So what’s on your latest roll of film?

I look around when I travel, and invariably something ridiculous happens in front of me.

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What can you do with digital photo printing that you can’t do with conventional silver halide?

In the digital realm, you have complete control over contrast, dodging, burning, getting rid of hairs on the print. And now we have inks that [should last] a couple hundred years at least.

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What’s different between the world of music and the world of photography?

There are no differences. It’s just me going about my daily life. You’re talking to a man from the north of England, who was penniless at one point, came to America, found a dream, followed it, succeeded, and now I’m just having fun!

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What’s next?

I was just in Los Angeles and recorded 18 tracks in 10 days, and I’ve got a new album coming out and a book coming out on my own photographic work, so we’re just rocking and rolling here.