David Bowie, Aladdin Sane Eyes Open, 1973. Duffy Archive.
By Brian Duffy
Located in London, GB
David Bowie, Aladdin Eyes Open, 1973 by Brian Duffy.
This photograph was taken during the photo shoot for the album cover for Aladdin Sane, January 1973, London.
This is an exquisite FRAMED* Archival Pigment print.
*Note delivery includes secure art crating & shipping.
Framed in black wood with glass and matt
Stamped by The Duffy Archive, UK.
Supplied with certificate of authenticity.
Gorgeous print measuring 115 x 115 x 3 cm (framed).
The image area is 95 x 95 cm.
Produced utilising the original contact sheet.
We ship regularly using Fedex Express services and ship to all international locations.
About these images :
“It wasn’t until we saw the contact sheets the next day I remember thinking, God this is spectacular. You just knew you had cracked it, boy, did you know it.” Celia Philo
DAVID BOWIE: FIVE SESSIONS
PHOTOGRAPHS BY DUFFY
Brian Duffy photographed David Bowie over five sessions between August 1972 and April 1980, and made the iconic Aladdin Sane album cover image.
January 1973–Session two–Aladdin Sane.
It has been called ‘The Mona Lisa of Pop’. Who could have imagined that the moment he clicked the shutter on the Hasselblad in early 1973 that one of those images would become known as a cultural icon? – Chris Duffy
Some background to the shoot.
The background stories to the Aladdin Sane shoot are told in rich detail in the book Bowie Duffy – Five Sessions. In particular it is a delight to read Duffy’s (a self confessed Marxist anarchist) analysis and compare that with the measured tone of Tony Defries. If you don’t have a copy of the book, here’s a flavour of their respective views – which amount to much the same thing – just expressed in different ways.
First up, Tony Defries: “I was looking for an iconic cover image and artwork that would help me to persuade RCA that Bowie was sufficiently important to warrant megastar treatment and funding in order to propel him to exactly that status. Engaging a master, world-class photographer to shoot the project /brand and to design the artwork was the best way to send that message. Brian had the ability to make the mundane image interesting and the interesting image fascinating.”
Then Duffy: “Tony wanted to make the most expensive cover he could possibly get a record company to pay for, because he realised that if it cost fifty quid, well, so what – but if it cost £5,000 the record company were now having to pay attention. He said “Can you make it expensive?“and I said “No problem old love.” I proposed–
One: A Dye-transfer. A genius method of being able to spend the most amount of money to get a reproduction from a colour transparency onto a piece of paper.
Two: Get the plates made, where? Switzerland.
Then employ me to design it and create it – even better and more wasteful.”
The Aladdin Sane session was a real team effort.
The location was Duffy’s studio at 151a King Henry’s Road in Primrose Hill, London, which had been the setting for the Ziggy Stardust session the previous August. Duffy had agreed with Tony Defries that his design agency, Duffy Design Concepts, which he ran with Celia Philo, would design the sleeve.
Present in Primrose Hill on that January day in 1973 were Duffy, David Bowie, Celia Philo, Tony Defries, French make-up artist Pierre Laroche, and Duffy’s studio manager Francis Newman, who also acted as his assistant that day. Follow-up work on the detailed airbrushing required to create the final artwork was carried out by Philip Castle.
What about that lightning bolt flash and the liquid pool?
The idea for the lightning bolt came from David Bowie. The realisation of that lighting bolt into the form that appeared on the sleeve was down to Duffy. Its source is believed to be a rice cooker that was in Duffy’s studio – and which had a small logo with a red and blue flash.
Francis Newman remembers, “Pierre stared to apply this tiny little flash on his face and when Duffy saw that he said, “No, not like that, like this” and literally drew it right across his face and said to Pierre, “Now, fill that in.””
The red colour was lipstick. Adding the pool of liquid to the collarbone was Duffy’s idea, and this was brilliantly airbrushed in as part of the post-production work by Philip Castle.
David Bowie explained the background to Rolling Stone magazine, that it was a “Lightning bolt. An electric kind of thing. Instead of, like, the flame of a lamp, I thought he would probably be cracked by lightning. Sort of an obvious-type thing, as he was sort of an electric boy. But the teardrop was Brian Duffy’s. He put that on afterward, just popped it in there. I thought it was rather sweet.”
DAVID BOWIE
David Robert Jones (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016), known professionally as David Bowie (/ˈboʊi/ BOH-ee),[2] was an English singer-songwriter and actor. He was a leading figure in the music industry and is considered one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century, acclaimed by critics and musicians, particularly for his innovative work during the 1970s. His career was marked by reinvention and visual presentation, with his music and stagecraft having a significant impact on popular music. During his lifetime, his record sales, estimated at 140 million albums worldwide, made him one of the world's best-selling music artists. In the UK, he was awarded ten platinum album certifications, eleven gold and eight silver, and released eleven number-one albums. In the US, he received five platinum and nine gold certifications. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996.
Born in Brixton, South London, Bowie developed an interest in music as a child, eventually studying art, music and design before embarking on a professional career as a musician in 1963. "Space Oddity" became his first top-five entry on the UK Singles Chart after its release in July 1969. After a period of experimentation, he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with his flamboyant and androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust. The character was spearheaded by the success of his single "Starman" and album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, which won him widespread popularity. In 1975, Bowie's style shifted radically towards a sound he characterised as "plastic soul", initially alienating many of his UK devotees but garnering him his first major US crossover success with the number-one single "Fame" and the album Young Americans. In 1976, Bowie starred in the cult film The Man Who Fell to Earth, directed by Nicolas Roeg, and released Station to Station. The following year, he further confounded musical expectations with the electronic-inflected album Low (1977), the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno that came to be known as the "Berlin Trilogy". "Heroes" (1977) and Lodger (1979) followed; each album reached the UK top five and received lasting critical praise.
After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had UK number ones with the 1980 single "Ashes to Ashes", its parent album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), and "Under Pressure", a 1981 collaboration with Queen. He reached his commercial peak in 1983 with Let's Dance; the album's title track topped both UK and US charts. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including industrial and jungle. He also continued acting; his roles included Major Jack Celliers in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), Jareth the Goblin King in Labyrinth (1986), Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and Nikola Tesla...
Category
1970s Modern David Saxe Portrait Photography
MaterialsColor, Archival Pigment
