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Album cover photographer Joel Brodsky dies

STAMFORD, Conn., March 19 (UPI) -- Joel Brodsky whose album cover photography helped define music's visual image in the '60s and '70s, died in his Stamford, Conn., home of a heart attack. He was 67.

Brodsky used a now-obsolete format -- the 12 3/8-inch square of the album cover -- as his canvas for pictures that ranged from moody portraits to stylized illustrations of ideas, The Washington Post said.

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His portfolio of about 400 album covers includes musicians such as B.B. King, Carly Simon, Barry Manilow, Kiss, Iggy Pop and Gladys Knight and the Pips.

His best-known picture shows a bare-chested Jim Morrison of the Doors, with his arms outstretched on the cover of the 1985 "The Best of the Doors" album. The black-and-white image captures the qualities that made Morrison an important musical figure of his time.

Brodsky described the session in a 1981 interview, saying Morrison was "totally plastered ... so drunk he was stumbling into the lights."

Brodsky left rock-and-roll to concentrate on commercial work. Until he retired in 2001, he globe-trotted to shoot advertising campaigns for DuPont, Revlon and Avon.

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Brodsky, who died March 1, is survived by his wife, three daughters, a sister and three grandchildren.

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