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Photos: Dan Fong
To request permission to reproduce these photos, please email sabine.kortals@colorado.edu.

Among the American Music Research Center (AMRC) collections, hidden gems exist around every corner: Colorado history, music legends, big band ephemera, silent film scores, letters from CU Boulder founders and more. In our new series—Gems of the AMRC collections—we aim to spotlight their content and the stories of the people behind them. ��

Our first deep dive explores the comprising folders of photos captured by the legendary Colorado rock 'n' roll and folk music photographer.

wasn’t music at all, but a chance to capture the president at the time: Dwight D. Eisenhower. “Since I was such a little kid, all the photographers let me stand in the front. To me, those photos are amazing because at 14, I could tell that I already had the eye and the way to compose the pictures—plus they were really sharp and in focus.”

From there, Fong (Mktg. ’70) continued to take photos and started his own photography business after graduating from CU Boulder. “I did everything from bar mitzvah photographs to portraits to weddings,” he recalls. “The biggest break came when KFML—the underground radio station—ended up three blocks from my studio. I went down there and made a deal with them: ‘I’ll take photographs of the artists and give them to you for your advertising and you do radio commercials for me.’ That was a big deal because that’s when I met all of the record guys.”

Fong’s photography is highly varied—from family portraits to posed album covers to current events photojournalism. But what he’s best known for is his 1970s concert photography. In his career, Fong photographed the Doobie Brothers, the Grateful Dead, Zephyr, The Who, Firefall, Fleetwood Mac and many others.

Stars of the collection include concert photos captured on the CU Boulder campus. There are shots of Otis Taylor performing with Zephyr on the steps of Norlin Library. There’s also a series of photos taken in Folsom Field featuring Firefall and a very familiar horizon.

Firefall at Folsom Field.

“I climbed up in the scaffolding to take all of those pictures of the people in the background and that teaches you not to be embarrassed—because, you know, 50,000 people are looking at you!”

A few years ago, Fong began thinking about how to ensure his collection outlived him and welcomed the opportunity to house his collection at CU Boulder. “I’ve known a lot of photographers who didn’t think about archiving their work—and then something would happen, people would throw their work away or it wouldn’t go to the same place,” he says.

“My collection is huge and I had been thinking about what to do with it, so I asked Megan [Lead Archivist Megan Friedel] whether she was interested in archiving my entire collection. Had Megan and the university not said yes, so many of these images…you'd never see them.”

Otis Taylor and Zephyr on the steps of Norlin Library.

Even the Eisenhower photographs were nearly lost to time. “I lost that film in a moving box in my parents’ basement for 50 years—but when my mom died, I found the box. The university has a bunch of those photographs now.”

Through the years, Fong has changed cameras, gone from film to digital photography and evolved editing strategies—but he says the main change to his photography is how comfortable he has gotten behind the lens. “Being a photographer is like being a basketball player,” he shares. “It’s like Caitlin Clark—you practice it and it’s muscle memory. That’s what happens after years of being a photographer.”

The AMRC will host an exhibit with photographs from the Dan Fong Collection in April—stay tuned for details. Ongoing, the Dan Fong Collection is available to researchers and the public��by appointment.��