The guitarist keels towards the circle of light, holding his instrument aloft by the neck and preparing to slam it into the stage. He wields it like a bayonet, a mace, or an oversized phallus, while his bandmates in the background leap about and a distant audience roars. He is at once alone and surrounded by worshippers, an icon of rage and self-love.

‘Bob Dylan with Kids, Liverpool, England’ (1966), by Barry Feinstein

Pennie Smith’s photo of Paul Simonon, bass player for The Clash, contains all the ingredients of the best rock photography: sex, aggression and authenticity. It became the cover for the band’s hit album London Calling, whose pink and green type self-consciously invoked another momentous episode in rock history: Elvis Presley’s debut LP, which spotlights the King himself in the throes of rapture.

That photograph of Elvis in ecstasy was taken by William V. “Red” Robertson, and it can be seen, along with Smith’s masterpiece, in Who Shot Rock & Roll, an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum that celebrates the men and women who provide indelible records of fleeting experiences. The show’s curator, Gail Buckland, argues convincingly that fans with cameras contributed as much to rock mythology as the musicians themselves.

The taxonomy of rock photography can be broken down into a few familiar categories. First, there is life on the road: sincere shots of backstage boredom, gruelling bus rides, anonymous accommodation. Buddy Holly looks glum in Lew Allen’s 1958 photo of an interminable bus trip to nowhere. Eric Clapton’s wife Patty Boyd captures him wrapped in a towel and wearing a spaced-out expression in “Another Hotel Room”. And Elvis is pensive on the train from New York City to Chattanooga, Tennessee, listening to his own “Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel” on a cheap record player.

The candid, apparently spontaneous photo can also manufacture glamorous illusions. Bob Gruen’s 1978 shot of Stiv Bators and the Dead Boys, clowning around at CBGB with a group of topless and G-stringed women, sets out a seductive template for life on the wild side. Gruen explains in the catalogue how kids “looked at those pictures to learn how to be in a band, and to live a rock-and-roll lifestyle”.

The 1960s and 1970s were the heyday of these unposed, slice-of-life pictures, when musicians had – or at least affected – a laisser-faire attitude about their public persona. Gruen’s pictures of bands hanging out, boozing and dozing have an immediacy hard to find in the contrived publicity shots put out by the pop music industry today.

Mick Jagger (1982) by Michael Putland

Which isn’t to say that even the most genuine-looking photos actually represent reality. Bob Dylan at his most relaxed and unpretentious always presided over every aspect of his self-presentation. On multiple occasions, Barry Feinstein “captured” Dylan on his 1966 European tour barricaded behind sunglasses and lost in his own head. Those pictures tell a story about the alienated artist Dylan wanted to be – the homeless minstrel of his generation.

Dylan’s masterly manipulation of his own image brings us to the second phylum of rock photography, the meticulously planned portrait, designed to summarise and disseminate an artist’s brand. Terry O’Neill’s 1982 portrayal of The Police places Sting – the most photogenic and compelling of the group’s three members – front and centre. Resplendent in a quasi-transparent jersey, Sting projects a fusion of sex and smarts; his biceps bulge and his eyes burn. He is well aware of the need for total control: “If someone says, ‘OK, in a week’s time we’re going to do a photo-session,’ then I’ll prepare myself,” he has said. “When the camera’s there you say ‘OK this is what you’re going to focus on’, not ‘take me I’m all yours’.”

This type of photograph has come to dominate the genre, though you wouldn’t know it from this show, which touts the aura of spontaneity. Annie Leibovitz, whose slick, meticulously choreographed tableaux have become the standard against which all celebrity photography is now measured, figures here only in a grainy, 1972 snapshot of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley flanked by flaxen-haired groupies.

The third category encompasses the documentation of live concerts and the role musicians play as vessels of ritual adoration. In picture after picture, the star struts alone on the stage as crowds reach out to touch his garment or raise their arms in fascistic salute. Iggy Pop, stripped down to his underwear in Richard Creamer’s 1973 portrayal, passively receives the tribute of idolaters trying to grab and stroke him. Semi-naked, eyes rolled back, he personifies Dionysian abandon and Christ-like suffering. But he is not one to pay for the transgressions of others; here it’s the fans who pony up to watch him sin.

The exhibition argues that rock photography is to music what war is to politics, a continuation by other means. The images depend on the sound and very rarely rub against it, but they also mean very little if you don’t recognise the musicians they depict. Photographers offer viewers vicarious access, the magic of getting close enough to see that Springsteen is just a regular guy, that Jagger likes to have a pint with the boys, that Lennon’s cool is mixed with fragile ordinariness. But remove their fame and what you have is a collection of repetitive poses and hasty snapshots, punctuated by the rare revelation that requires no soundtrack to make it sing.

Until January 31, tel +1 718 638 5000