Lisa Law
{{short description|American photographer and filmmaker}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=December 2020}}
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| image = Lisa Law & unidentified woman.jpg
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| caption = Lisa Law, Madrid, New Mexico,
12 October 2013
| birth_name = Lisa Jo Bachelis{{cite web |title=Lisa Law: The Castle |url=https://americanhistory.si.edu/lisalaw/3.htm |website=americanhistory.si.edu |access-date=27 March 2022}}
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1943|03|08}}
| birth_place = Los Angeles County, California{{cite web |title=Lisa Jo Bachelis, Born 03/08/1943 in California |url=https://www.californiabirthindex.org/birth/lisa_jo_bachelis_born_1943_2582286 |website=CaliforniaBirthIndex.org |access-date=27 March 2022 |quote=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.}}
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| relatives = John Phillip Law
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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.{{cite web |title=Lisa Law: Organizing Woodstock |url=https://americanhistory.si.edu/lisalaw/7.htm |website=National Museum of American History |access-date=25 June 2023}}{{cite web |last1=Bramen |first1=Lisa |title=Woodstock - How to Feed 400,000 Hungry Hippies |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/woodstockhow-to-feed-400000-hungry-hippies-65740098/ |website=Smithsonian Magazine |access-date=27 March 2022 |language=en}}{{cite news |last1=Amlen |first1=Deb |title='What We Have in Mind Is Breakfast in Bed for 400,000' |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/13/crosswords/daily-puzzle-2019-08-14.html |access-date=27 March 2022 |work=The New York Times |date=14 August 2019}}{{cite web |title=The Foodline - Woodstock and Granola |url=http://www.woodstockpreservation.org/Gallery/TheFoodLine.htm |website=woodstockpreservation.org |access-date=27 March 2022}} She was also involved in the organisation of the Woodstock '99 festival.{{cite web |last1=Vanapalli |first1=Viswa |title=Where is Woodstock Photographer Lisa Law Now? |url=https://thecinemaholic.com/where-is-woodstock-photographer-lisa-law-now/ |website=The Cinemaholic |access-date=25 June 2023 |date=3 August 2022}}
Early life
Lisa Bachelis was born to Selma (née Mikels), an attorney, and Lee Bachelis, a furrier. She has two brothers, Gregory Frank and Guy and she grew up in Burbank, California.{{cite web |title=Lisa Law: Photographic Beginnings |url=http://americanhistory.si.edu/lisalaw/2.htm |website=americanhistory.si.edu |access-date=27 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160715032623/http://americanhistory.si.edu/lisalaw/2.htm |archive-date=15 July 2016}} 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.{{cite web |title=Law, Lisa, 1967 |url=https://snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w6sr000j |website=Social Networks and Archival Context |access-date=27 March 2022}}{{cite news |last1=Livingston |first1=Joan |title=Lisa Law: Documenting the Woodstock Generation in photos |url=https://www.taosnews.com/news/lisa-law-documenting-the-woodstock-generation-in-photos/article_05b3bd33-63c1-58ea-bc02-9f8e6209d502.html |access-date=27 March 2022 |work=The Taos News |date=2009-08-08 |language=en}}
Career
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{{cite web |title=Lisa Law |url=https://sfae.com/Artists/Lisa-Law |website=sfae.com |access-date=27 March 2022}}{{cite news |title=Nostalgic Flashback to the 1960s : Photographer's Candid Stills Chronicle Life as a Hippie |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-12-17-vw-29540-story.html |access-date=27 March 2022 |work=Los Angeles Times |date=17 December 1987}} 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. Law, his brother John Phillip Law, and their friend, Jack Simons, owned a four-story mansion in Los Feliz, known as the Castle.{{cite web |title=Lisa Law |url=https://www.annenbergphotospace.org/person/lisa-law/ |website=Annenberg Space for Photography |access-date=27 March 2022}} 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.
After living in Yelapa, Mexico, for a short time in 1966, Law chronicled the lives of the flower children in Haight Ashbury.{{cite news |title=Lisa Law Built a Museum in Mexico |url=https://www.sfreporter.com/arts/2019/03/27/lisa-law-built-a-museum-in-mexico/ |access-date=27 March 2022 |work=Santa Fe Reporter |language=en}} 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.{{cite web |title=Lisa Law: The Counterculture |url=https://americanhistory.si.edu/lisalaw/4.htm |website=americanhistory.si.edu |access-date=25 June 2023}} Law then joined those who migrated to the communes of New Mexico in the late Sixties and early Seventies.[https://snaccooperative.org/view/52263210 Social Networks and Archival Context Cooperative website]
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. They divorced in 1977.
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.
Woodstock
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. Volunteers fed around 130,000 people with Dixie cups.{{cite news |title=Flashing back to Woodstock |url=https://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/08/13/twih.woodstock/ |access-date=27 March 2022 |work=CNN |date=2004-08-17}}{{cite web |title=Lisa Law: Organizing Woodstock |url=https://americanhistory.si.edu/lisalaw/7.htm |website=americanhistory.si.edu |access-date=27 March 2022}}{{cite web |title=Woodstock at 50: Good-for-You Groovy In a Dixie Cup |url=https://www.newberrymagazine.com/home/2019/7/16/woodstock-at-50-good-for-you-groovy-in-a-dixie-cup |website=Newberry Magazine |access-date=28 March 2022}}
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.
Works
Film
CD cover photographs
- Dezeo: Jewish Music From Spain by Consuelo Luz, Wagram Music, 2000
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [https://learninglab.si.edu/q/ll-c/RR6LgGYArM3NCDMp Lisa Law collection] at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History (Photographic History collection)
- [http://americanhistory.si.edu/lisalaw/ A Visual Journey - Photographs by Lisa Law 1965-1971] Smithsonian Institution
- {{IMDb name|0492355}}
- {{cite web |last1=Law |first1=Lisa |title=Biography of Lisa Law |url=http://www.flashingonthesixties.com/pages/bio.html |website=Flashing on the Sixties |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130826175558/http://www.flashingonthesixties.com/pages/bio.html |archive-date=26 August 2013}}
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Category:American photographers
Category:College of Marin alumni
Category:City College of San Francisco alumni
Category:People from Los Angeles County, California
Category:American women writers
Category:Filmmakers from California