Unseen Woodstock Pictures: 1000 Copies Available Saturday

Forty years ago, Dan Garson, then a 17 year old music lover, got a ride to the three day Woodstock music festival from New Haven, Connecticut. Garson had been snapping photos for his high-school newspaper, but only a few of the images were published.

Now, 40 years later, the box of unseen photographs has been uncovered and collected in a massive two-volume work by Genesis Publications. One thousand individually signed, limited edition copies are available, produced with Woodstock organizer Michael Lang. They will be released tomorrow, Saturday August 15th, 2009, the 40th anniversary of the festival.

Rona Elliot, the event’s publicist in 1969, had the following to say about the limited edition photographs:

“Dan’s remarkable photographs reveal an exceptional talent, fully formed at 17 years of age. His pictures provide a cohesive narrative of his own Woodstock experience. They demonstrate that he understood, perfectly, both where he was at that moment in time, and the culturally shifting spectacle he was recording. While Dan worked in the photo pit, shooting the musicians onstage, he separated himself from the other photographers. Rather than huddle together with the group, Dan stationed himself adjacent to the film crew. As a result, his images are both unfamiliar and fresh to the eye nearly 40 years after they were taken. It is nothing short of a miracle that his photographs have survived the 40 years since. Having sat, unexamined, in a cardboard box in his parents’ basement for decades, today’s digital technology has allowed them to be restored to their rightful glory.”

A preview of the photos and included commentary are currently available from USA Today.