A West Michigan-born photographer has gifted over 2,000 photos to Grand Valley State University, including a collection from 1964 of Bob Dylan.

In what MLive reported as "the largest donation the university has received", nationally published photographer Douglas R. Gilbert felt GVSU was a good "home" for his collection as he was happy with the university's "appreciation" of photography and art.

Gilbert grew up in West Michigan, discovered a love for photography and pursued it as a career working as a freelance photographer for publications like The Grand Rapids Press and the Holland Sentinel.

He then went to Michigan State University and from there went to New York City to work for Look Magazine where he took photos (some now part of larger collections) of Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop and the Stooges as well as Simon and Garfunkel.

As far as the pictures of Bob Dylan go, Gilbert was assigned to spend some time with the then up-and-coming legend and while the magazine did not use the pictures due to them being "Too scruffy for a family magazine," they still speak volumes to this collection.

With photos from his six decades of photography, Gilbert also has images in the Smithsonian Museum that help tell stories of the Civil Rights Movement.

 

Not only will GVSU be a home to rare images of Bob Dylan in the early days of his career, people will also get a look at an artists (mostly) full body of work.

You can find Gilbert's website at douglasrgilbert.com and the digitized version of the entire collection at GVSU at: artgallery.gvsu.edu

(Note: the images are still being sorted and digitized, continue to check back for updates!)

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