Michael Ochs ’66 built rock’s greatest photo archive
A collector, curator and kid at heart, he turned his passion for music into a respected treasure trove. Keep scrolling to see some of the photos.
Amassing the world’s largest collection of rock ’n’ roll photographs wasn’t something Michael Ochs ’66 set out to do. “Like he always said, if he’d planned it, he would have failed,” Sandee Ochs says of her late husband, who died in July at age 82. “It was a passion and hobby that turned into
a living.”
After graduating from Ohio State, Ochs worked as a photographer for Columbia Records and then served for a few years as manager for his brother, Phil Ochs, a popular folk singer. (Phil attended Ohio State, too, but left one quarter before graduation.) Michael eventually led the publicity departments of multiple record companies, including Columbia, and began collecting records and publicity photographs. “I want one of everything,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1980. “My life’s goal is to learn everything there is to know about music, which is impossible to achieve.”
Ochs loaned his photographs to publications and after one jokingly credited the Michael Ochs Archives and another paid him, his hobby turned into a business. “He had an expertise on what was rare and important, and for many years he had the market cornered,” Sandee says. “His passion was finding collections and bargaining for them.”
The New York Times labeled his millions of photographs “the premier source of musician photography in the world.” Ochs published Rock Archives: A Photographic Journey Through the First Two Decades of Rock & Roll in 1984, hosted the “Archives Alive” radio show and was music coordinator for several movies, including “Christine” (1983).
After his collection outgrew his home in Venice, California, Ochs bought an adjoining property, built storage facilities and employed six people to catalog and market his collection. He sold his collection to Getty Images in 2007 for an undisclosed sum. “Michael sold his company on his 64th birthday,” Sandee says. “He spent the next two years consulting for Getty and then never looked back. He had a great life of travel, fun, friends and family. He was a kid in grown-up clothes, and he enjoyed life.”
