Simon Fowler

Chrissie Hynde The Pretenders, Talk of the Town

1978

Whether through commissioned recording sleeves or official photo sessions, concert and theatre posters, or innumerable magazine covers and national print media featuring Simon Fowler work, he boasts an incredible portfolio. As principal photographer for British pop magazine Smash Hits at the height of its reign as the standard bearer for all things fashionably pop in the UK throughout the eighties, his signature work represents bespoke visual signposts for some of the biggest selling and most popular recording artists on the planet. Even more remarkable is the vast gamut of British and European cultural genres his photography embraces. As eighties British music rewrote the manual for infectious pop in all its sublime manifestations, Simon Fowlers lens and imagination experienced a similarly creative joie de vivre. Among so many stand out relationships including shooting the cover for the Christmas 1981 number one (The Human League’s landmark ‘Don’t You Want Me’), was forming a unique long-term relationship with one of rock’s most challenging behemoths… Queen and its charismatic but notoriously guarded singer Freddie Mercury. A high point was being roped in to shoot the band on the fly in and around Queen filming ground-breaking ‘Coronation Street’ housewife video spoof for ‘I Want to Break Free’.