By Ed Symkus

When Barry Schneier felt it was time for his next photography project about musicians, he decided to get to know his subjects, not just shoot them.

A relaxed amble through the photo show The Song Is Still Being Written: The Folk Music Portrait Project not only suggests the breadth of Boston’s acoustic music scene, but the skill of photographer Barry Schneier at capturing the inner character of his subjects.

Thirty-seven portraits at the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame in Boston’s Boch Center (the show is running through February 16) are spread across the walls of one room. In a second room there are also blown-up contact sheets, as well as a couple of display cases featuring related items, ranging from club schedules and instruments to albums and pieces of performers’ outfits. The show’s  focus is on both legendary artists and up-and-comers (members of the Folk Collective Initiative at Club Passim) presented in laid-back, informal settings. The photos are all horizontal shots, each surrounded by white mats and thin black frames; and the people in them are obviously very relaxed with the photographer and his process.

You might think that an exhibit with “only” 37 photos is something you could just whisk through. But in this case, that would be a bad idea. These are pictures to gaze at, to think about, to connect with as, obviously, Schneier did with his subjects.

There’s Chris Smither in his kitchen, happy to be picking away on his guitar for an audience of one: his little dog. Check out Lori McKenna sitting on a couch at home, contentment and a hint of a smile on her face. A smile will appear on the face of anyone looking at the shot of Tom Rush standing on a dock in Kittery, Maine, playing a chord on his guitar. Love for her instrument is expressed by Lydia Harper, spread out on a long windowsill, hugging her blue ukulele. Happiness exudes from Geoff Muldaur, seated at his piano, arms folded, with a banjo on a stand next to him.

A companion coffee table book with the same title is available here.

Schneier has been taking pictures of musicians since the ’70s; he garnered accolades for his 2019 photo book Bruce Springsteen: Rock and Roll Future. He recently spoke to me about The Song is Still Being Written by phone from his home in Plymouth.

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The Arts Fuse: What’s the origin of this exhibit?

Barry Schneier: It came from the connection I made with Betsy Siggins over a decade ago. She was a founding member of Club 47. After she saw a lot of the stuff I shot of artists in Boston and Cambridge in the ’70s, she wanted to include it in her Folk New England Archive, which I gladly agreed to. Through Betsy, I got to know people at Passim — executive director Jim Wooster, managing director Matt Smith, and some of the artists.

AF: So, this all came after the Springsteen book?

Schneier: Yes. In 2019, when I was done with the Springsteen book, I was thinking that I wanted to do a new project — something contemporary. So, I pitched this idea to Jim and Matt. They thought it was a good idea, and we started identifying different artists and doing some photography in February of 2020. But then Covid hit, so we tabled the whole thing. In May of 2021, we resurfaced the idea, and they were for it.

AF: What were your initial ideas for the project?

Schneier: Since a lot of my work with musicians had mostly been performance photography, I thought that I didn’t want to do that; I wanted to meet the people and get to know them. And I wanted to photograph them in their homes and places they were comfortable and creative in.

AF: Were the places and poses your ideas or the artists’?

Schneier: I would ask them where they did their work, their thinking, where they felt creative, where they got their muse. And we went to those places. In some cases, it was their house, in others it was a park they liked.

AF: There’s a wonderful intimacy in these photos. How did you go about catching that?

Schneier: The idea was to make them feel comfortable with my presence. So, at a certain juncture, I was hoping we were just having a conversation. I was taking photos, oftentimes with artists I didn’t know that much about, so I would first read about them, listen to their music. Then, while I was setting up, I would say, “Oh, I love this song, I see you’re from here, I see you studied this, I see you used to perform with this person.” And we got very relaxed in a lot of ways. In some cases, I would be walking around with them and say, “That looks like a nice corner in your house,” or “I like the light over there. Let’s try that,” and they were all very obliging.

AF: I’d like to ask you about a few specific shots. What was going on with Chris Smither and his dog?

Schneier: That’s a perfect example of a happy accident. He has a studio at his place, and we were doing shots of him doing different things there. Later, we were downstairs in his kitchen, talking. Chris was sitting there playing his guitar, the dog came over and sat down, and I said, “Hold it right there!”

AF: Betsy Siggins isn’t a musician, but she’s so important on the local club scene with her history at Club 47 and Passim. In that closeup of her, I felt that I knew what she was thinking.

Schneier: She was the first person I shot, back in January of 2022. I had some cool shots of her, but she said, “Oh, I hate my hair.” So, toward the end of the project, in May of 2024, we redid it. She was really comfortable in that shot and she gave me a nice look, and she really liked that one.

AF: My favorite one is Geoff Muldaur.

Schneier: Geoff had some things in mind, and I had some things in mind. But that one was my idea. What I really like about the shot is he’s sitting at the piano but he’s not facing the keys, he’s facing us. And he’s got a sort of a pensive look. And l love the fact that I got a little banjo in there. He loved that shot.

AF: Could you briefly sum up what the show and the book are about?

Schneier: They’re the photographic and narrative arc of artists that initiated the folk revolution in Boston and Cambridge. The common denominator is they all at some point started their careers on the stage at Passim and Club 47.

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Ed Symkus is a Boston native and Emerson College graduate. He went to Woodstock, interviewed Chick Corea, Julie Andrews, Joyce Carol Oates, and Al Gore, and has visited the Outer Hebrides, the Lofoten Islands, Anglesey, Mykonos, Nantucket, the Azores, Catalina, Kangaroo Island, Capri, and the Isle of Wight with his wife Lisa.