NEW PHOTO BOOK CELEBRATES MUSIC AND FASHION ICON DAVID BOWIE
More than four decades later, famed photographer Steve Schapiro can remember a certain phone call like it was yesterday. “It was 1974 and David Bowie’s assistant Michael called me to ask about doing a photo shoot with David, and I said yes before he even finished that sentence.”
The spectacular results of that long shoot, which lasted from 4pm until dawn the next morning, make up a large section of Bowie: Photographs by Steve Schapiro, which is being released today by Powerhouse Books. Some of the pictures in the 104-page tome will seem familiar, as they later graced Bowie’s album covers or were used on magazine covers; others have never seen the light of day before. Schapiro not only loves them all, but treasures his time over the years with the rock and music legend.
“His death was an incredible loss to me, and to everyone. In some ways, it’s amazing how everyone in every corner of the word had such a strong reaction to his death,” he notes. “This book was planned before his death, but because of it, I changed many things, including the content. I think the book became more spiritual in feeling, more about the aspects of his life. What I tried to capture is the real person, not just the rock-n-roll person. In so many of these shots, he is just himself revealing the man to my camera. What I loved about David is that he always had a strong sense of who he was. He had great confidence.”
He also had a lot of ideas – and a lot of clothing. “All the ideas for the 1974 shoot were David’s. Even if every photograph is a collaboration, I feel I just brought someone brilliant to the light of the day,” reveals Schapiro. “He arrived at the shoot with all the clothing you see in the book – except one piece; he had to borrow one shirt from my assistant.”
As Schapiro notes, he had even forgotten about some of the photographs that can now be seen in the book. “After I started this project last year, someone from either David’s record company or his team returned some photos to me, since David had always had approval on anything I shot. And after that I started looking through all my transparencies. I found one photo I call ‘Bowie Blue’ that I had never even noticed, and I used it for a gallery show of photographs I did in Chicago. It’s the one people reacted to the most. And now it’s in my living room. Like so many of these shots, I never get tired of looking at them.”
Schapiro admits his last personal contact with Bowie was in 1987, when the singer asked him to photograph his upcoming concert tour. “I had just planned my first real vacation with my family; I was taking my wife and our young son to Paris, and I just couldn’t dump my family,” he recalls. “But I am really thrilled that this book has come out to honor David.”
Editor’s note: Schapiro will be doing various book signings across the U.S. and Europe, include on April 13 at The Booksmith in San Francisco, and May 1 at Magers and Quinn in Minneapolis. Photos from Bowie will also be featured in an exhibition entitled Steve Schapiro: Heroes that will open June 9 at London’s Atlas Gallery.
