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Jay and Ricki Blakesberg On Becoming Stewards of the Grateful Dead’s Visual History

The father-and-daughter team behind Retro Photo Archive discuss the Neal Cassady slide that started it all, the unlabeled film rolls that yielded the jail-cell portrait Weir had never seen and what it means to give these photographs a wall at David Kordansky Gallery.

Late last month David Kordansky Gallery opened “An American Beauty: Grateful Dead 1965-1995,” on view at its New York space at 520 W. 20th Street through August 7. Curated by the father-and-daughter team of Jay and Ricki Blakesberg, it gathers 20 large-scale prints and more than a dozen smaller ones by 11 photographers who shot the band from the Haight-Ashbury days through the Jerry Garcia years. The New York iteration opens five months after the death of Bob Weir, which sets a different and elegiac tone for the work. We caught up with the Blakesbergs to hear about the manager who became one of the band’s earliest photographers, the slide of Neal Cassady that started the archive and the jail-cell portrait Weir had never seen.

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“Between the Dark and Light” opened at the Haight Street Art Center in July 2023, timed to Dead & Company’s three-night farewell at Oracle Park. David Kordansky came through the exhibition without introducing himself, then approached you that night at the concert. How did a five-day fan show become a David Kordansky book and exhibition?

Jay: Dave saw the exhibition at the Haight Street Art Center in San Francisco and it really moved him. He sought me out after that and reached out, but I had no idea who he was or what his gallery was. I just said sure, let’s talk, not expecting to ever hear from him again.

After our first conversation and a little research, I realized who Dave was and how important David Kordansky Gallery is. I could also see how much he loved the Grateful Dead. Once we built a rapport, we started discussing the idea of a catalogue/book based on the original exhibition.

The next iteration of the exhibition was in Las Vegas during the Sphere run with Dead & Company. When we did that show, Dave saw even more photos than what was in the SF exhibit and kept asking, “Are these gonna be in the book?” I said absolutely, and it kept growing.

After those two exhibitions, we had a meeting in L.A. where Dave brought up the idea of doing a show at his Los Angeles gallery, which we ended up doing in June 2025. We are so thankful to Dave for seeing the uniqueness and beauty in these photographs and giving us a platform to put them out for so many more people to enjoy.

The 2024 version sat inside the “Dead Forever Experience” at Sphere in Las Vegas. That version was a two-story fan space with merch, Mickey Hart’s artworks and David Lemieux’s tape collection. It saw more than 65,000 visitors. In New York, there are 20 large-scale prints and two-dozen-plus smaller ones, in editions of three. How do you decide what goes into each iteration of this show? Is it hard to decide what’s cut?

Jay: Ricki took the lead in curating both the L.A. and NYC shows and........

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