The career of celebrated photographer Kevin Cummins began on 29th June 1973 when, as a nineteen-year-old photography student, he photographed David Bowie. That image is now in the renowned photography collection of the V&A Museum and marked the beginning of Kevin Cummins’ four-decade-long visual chronicle of David Bowie’s remarkable career. David Bowie: Mixing Memory & Desire includes some of the best portraits of Bowie ever taken, the majority of which have never been published until now. From those legendary Bowie gigs in the early 1970s, through to a poignant image taken outside his apartment in New York in 2016, Cummins has captured the many faces of Bowie and created a book that is essential for Bowie fans everywhere.
“AS ICONIC PHOTOGRAPHER, ADVENTUROUS FAN AND INSIDER
EYE-WITNESS, KEVIN CUMMINS HAS ALWAYS BEEN WHERE THE CULTURAL
ACTION IS. MIXING MEMORY & DESIRE WILL MAKE YOU SEE DAVID BOWIE IN
A SURPRISING AND STIMULATING NEW WAY.” -PAUL MORLEY
“DAVID BOWIE WAS ON A CREATIVE JOURNEY THROUGH MUSIC,
FASHION AND ART. A JOURNEY UNPARALLELED IN POPULAR CULTURE.
WHAT A PRIVILEGE IT IS FOR US THAT KEVIN CUMMINS WAS THERE TO
CAPTURE THIS JOURNEY. HIS WONDERFUL BOOK SHOWS US EXACTLY
WHY BOWIE WAS SO UNIQUE.” -NOEL GALLAGHER
“KEVIN BRILLIANTLY CAPTURES THE ESSENCE OF THE GREAT MAN IN
THESE REMARKABLE PHOTOGRAPHS. CUMMINS IS SO ADEPT AT BREAKING
DOWN THE BARRIER OF THE CAMERA, YOU SENSE BOWIE IS COMPLETELY
AT EASE WHEN THEY WORKED TOGETHER” -GOLDIE
Product details
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1788404289
- ISBN-13 : 978-1788404280
- Item Weight : 2.88 pounds
- Dimensions : 7.99 x 10 x 1.85 inches
The artist’s artist. Jonesy was a true subversive, lambasting in prose, by way of a clever endorsement of the same sustainable code that guided his life. That a man could assume identity after identity, but never lose his grounded cool in public, come heartbreak, drink or drugs, come lows and highs, rarely spoken of. We’d put Mark E Smith in the same category as Jonesy, but more guttural and integrated into the class he sought to lift. Bowie came from the LSD elevation of the 60s and was above showing that he was flat on his arse, even if he was. He made Low instead, with the truly tremendous Be My Wife as his nod to his own loneliness or weakness. Boys Keep Swinging, a year later, is a magnificent political commentary on the unmoveable, ancient ‘stability’ of the old-boy and old-girl British political class. Misunderstood by many, a work of quite brilliant subversion, as was This Is Not America, with the super-savvy and immortal line ‘snowman melting from the inside, falcon spirals to the ground’. It could not have been put better. Age did not mellow old Jonesy, and the fantastic I’d Rather Be High rants against 17 year old kids being recruited to shoot Arabs, that could be set in 1878 or 2003. Sadly, though, not one of you shed a tear for Mark E Smith. Do you think that might have something to do with class differentials? We cried long and hard for both.