Frank Lisciandro was at the right place at the right time. The Brooklyn-born photographer met Jim Morrison at film school and, almost four decades later, he's still chronicling the short, tumultuous life of the rock icon.

A selection of his pictures of Morrison, many never before exhibited or published, is on display at Galerie Harwood in Hudson. Frank Lisciandro, Chronicling American Rock History, which opened Saturday, also includes shots of various rock festivals in California in the '60s.

Lisciandro was studying film at the University of California at Los Angeles in the mid-1960s when the film school was a hotbed of creative action, one of the key training grounds for the filmmakers - Francis Ford Coppola, among them - who would go on to revolutionize American cinema.

It was at UCLA that Lisciandro met Morrison and Ray Manzarek, who were both enrolled in the graduate film program. Morrison and Manzarek were also playing in a fledgling rock band called The Doors.

Lisciandro and Morrison became pals, and that close friendship led to Lisciandro working on the 1968 Doors documentary Feast of Friends. He shot and edited the 40-minute portrait of The Doors on tour, a seldom-screened film that will reportedly be released on DVD in the coming months. He and Morrison also co-directed an experimental film titled HWY, which Morrison wrote and starred in.

Along the way, Lisciandro took between 1,500 and 2,000 photos of the Doors frontman, known affectionately to his millions of fans as the Lizard King.

The Morrison photos on display at Galerie Harwood cover the years of Morrison and Lisciandro's friendship, ranging from a 1967 shot of Morrison as a new rock idol to a 1971 shot of an older-looking, bearded Lizard King recording L.A. Woman, his last album with The Doors.

Morrison was a pleasure to shoot, Lisciandro said in an interview at Galerie Harwood, which is owned by his friend Ihor Todoruk.

"First of all, he never said, 'Don't take my picture.' He let me take any picture I wanted. He trusted me. I felt that he made a stronger impact on the lens than anyone else I knew."

Lisciandro feels protective of Morrison's legacy and believes that the singer/poet who belted out Light My Fire and Touch Me has been the victim of a series of slanted, inaccurate portrayals in the media.

Setting the record straight is one reason Lisciandro has penned two books about Morrison, Jim Morrison: An Hour for Magic and Morrison: A Feast of Friends. He was also co-producer of the 1978 album, An American Prayer, which combined recordings of Morrison reciting his poetry with music by the surviving Doors.

Few people have captured the complex individual that was Jim Morrison, he said.

"There was the stage performer, the Lizard King. But there was also Jim Morrison, the friend. He was very sensitive, very well read. It was easy to be around the guy. He was just a nice person that you could have a few laughs with."

Lisciandro doesn't deny that there was a self-destructive side to Morrison. Still, it came as a shock to all of his close friends when he died of heart failure in a bathtub in Paris in 1971 at age 27.

"He was an alcoholic. Jim Morrison met the definition of drinking to excess every day. He got drunk on one drink and he just kept on drinking," Lisciandro said.

"Jim was not a hard-drug guy. His drug of choice was alcohol. But to die in a bathtub in Paris. ... He was a daredevil and risk-taker. I thought he'd fall off a building and die, because he loved to fall off the ledge of buildings."

Frank Lisciandro, Chronicling American Rock History continues at Galerie Harwood, 3663 Harwood Dr., Hudson, until Jan. 15. For more information, call (450) 458-1557.

bkelly@thegazette.canwest.com