Revealing Julie Kramer's Story to the World

There are many things that led to the creation of Basement Archives, but the short story is this.

After several years of sharing my life with Julie, I’d seen various pictures of celebrities around the house that she had photographed. I mentioned to her, like others, that I thought they were pretty cool and she should do something with them. Time passed and then came the fateful day in the winter of 2018 when I volunteered to help clean out the garage. I pointed to an old steamer chest next to a stack of winter tires and said, “What’s in there?” “Photos,” she replied.

I opened the chest and the glow from stacks of red and yellow Kodak photo paper boxes washed over the room. As I looked through the boxes, I found many pictures I’d seen before but even more were new. My first reaction was to ask the question, “Do you have the negs?” She pointed to a green storage box on the shelf behind us. Inside were archival boxes filled with negs and contact sheets.

“This might be the new basement archives,” I said, jokingly referring to Dylan’s basement tapes. But I would soon come to think that might not be a joke. I finally asked if I could share her photos with everyone else; she said yes.

With 35 years experience as a visual effects artist, my first instinct was to create high res digital scans of everything. It was during that process I realized that these were way beyond pretty cool images.

They’re historical, and when seen in their entirety they tell a story of a time and place that doesn’t exist anymore.

They’re intimate, an inside look at artists on the road and what they do when they have a moment to relax and just hang out.

This was a time before social media and selfies, when actual relationships were created and the photos show that development over the years.

Many of these images have never been seen before and some of the artists have gone on to become Hall of Fame inductees. A few are no longer with us, and one of them became knighted by the Queen and later won the Nobel Prize.

I guess part of the reason Julie and I fit together so well is because we truly do complement each other, my over excited ego is balanced out by her almost Buddha like selflessness. She’s never really been convinced that anyone would be interested in a bunch of her “old photos.” I however believe she’s created some of the most iconic images in Rock and Roll. I’m sure the truth falls somewhere in between.

- Jimi Simmons