Bob Dylan’s 80th Birthday: Celebrate with These Rare Photographs from the 1960s by Ted Russell

Bob Dylan — the legendary singer-songwriter who won a Nobel Prize for his poeticism — turned 80 on Monday. In celebration of the artist’s 60 years on the folk-rock scene, PEOPLE has an exclusive look at rare photos of Dylan at the “genesis” of his career. Shot by photojournalist Ted Russell, the images include the earliest professional photographs ever taken of the young singer as he performed at Gerde’s Folk City and strummed his guitar in his Greenwich Village apartment in New York City in November 1961. Russell photographed Dylan again as he was seated next to James Baldwin at the NECLC’s Bill of Rights Dinner in November 1963, and while he was writing songs at his typewriter in his home in March 1964. By then Bob Dylan was “the voice of a generation,” says Chris Murray, who wrote the introduction to Russell’s photo book, Bob Dylan: NYC 1961-1964. “I can’t help but think about how Bob has endured,” says Murray in an interview with PEOPLE. “So many talented people, whether it be Jimi Hendrix or George Harrison or Kurt Cobain, were taken from us way too soon. But Bob has been a constant for us in the best sense of that word.”