Medimex 2024, scheduled in Taranto from June 19 to 23 with concerts by The Smile, Pulp, and The Jesus and Mary Chain, presents the exhibition Bob Gruen: John Lennon, The New York Years and the video mapping AIncanto-La Sirena Digitale. The exhibition Bob Gruen: John Lennon, The New York Years, on display from June 19 to July 14 at MarTA, National Archaeological Museum of Taranto, tells, through 60 photographs and texts, the collaboration of the most important photographer, namely with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Shortly after the couple moved to New York in 1971, Bob Gruen - who will be present at Medimex and will participate in a meeting at MarTA on Wednesday, June 19 -  became their personal photographer, as well as a friend, thus managing to document, through his camera, images that portrayed them both in their professional and private lives. 

In 1974, during a photo shoot with Lennon, Gruen suggested to the former Beatle to wear the white t-shirt with the inscription New York City, which Gruen himself had bought for him at a tourist stall about a year earlier. The result of that photo session were the now iconic images of John Lennon, perhaps his most famous photos, while wearing the white t-shirt - the sleeves were cut by Gruen himself - with the skyline of his adopted city in the background. Whether they were shots of Lennon and Yoko walking together in a park, or those included in the booklet of the album "Walls and Bridges," or even Sean Lennon just born, Lennon in front of the Statue of Liberty making the peace sign, Gruen's work documents almost ten years of John and Yoko's life in New York, after the Beatles' breakup. Bob Gruen was invited by Yoko Ono to visit their apartment located in the Dakota Building (outside of which Lennon was assassinated on December 8, 1980) more and more frequently. 

It was at their home that, in 1977, Lennon recorded some audio cassettes. In those recordings, we find songs like Free as a Bird, an early version of Real Love and Read more