ARTIST and photographer Keith Baugh has spent four decades evading heavy security to photograph Bob Dylan.

The musician has a strict ban on cameras at his concerts but that hasn’t prevented Newnham-based Keith from capturing some memorable images.

But now one of those images has been used on Dylan’s latest release, an eight-CD deluxe package after it was seen by the musician’s long-term manager Jeff Rosen.

Keith said: “All the Dylan shots were taken under difficult conditions – getting close to Dylan was an art in itself with an intense, swaying crush front of stage and security looking to confiscate any type of camera.

“Pre-digital meant having to rewind used film into the camera and reload, often with your feet off the ground.”

He says he overcomes the strict security restrictions using “well-honed techniques.”

“If you are determined to get up close to Bob Dylan, the procedure takes a lot of planning, coupled with large dollops of bravado, courage, audacity, moral fibre and a lot of nerve.

“Accredited music and press photographers are banned from all Bob Dylan concerts and tickets always carry the warning ‘camera prohibited’.

“Security is intense and includes bag checks and body searches – very few professional rock photographers have Bob Dylan shots in their portfolios.”

The photo in the new release, Trouble No More – which was released earlier this year – was taken at Earl’s Court in London in June 1981.

Keith was contacted by Jeff Rosen who saw some of his pictures from the 1981 tour.

“The European leg of the 1981 tour took place just months after John Lennon was killed.

“Tickets clearly stated ‘no cameras allowed’ – I loved the challenge.

Although the conditions in which the images were captured might be described as “unofficial”, many have been dubbed ‘iconic’.

They have appeared in magazines such as Rolling Stone, in the world’s leading photographic libraries and in recent exhibitions in Paris, London and Bristol.

Keith said: “I’ve been looking at a book of photographs of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel while listening to Bob Dylan’s Trouble No More – The Gospel Years turned up high.

“Works of pure genius, that’s what it’s all about.”