Pink Floyd

For their first photo shoot, Colin Prime took the band down to Ruskin park. All the guys were in high spirits at the time (Syd was performing cartwheels) but quite laid back, so after some slightly more... read more formal shots, Colin experimented and came up with this image, a version of which was later used on the back cover of the band’s debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. (Nick Mason, Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and Richard Wright)

I went on the road with Pink Floyd to shoot stills on the Dark Side of the Moon tour in 1974. After the tour the band went into Abbey Road to make a new album that became 'Wish You Were Here'. I was asked... read more by Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis, the brilliant designers of their record sleeves, to drop in discreetly and shoot some stills. They must have been recording 'Welcome to the Machine' because Roy Harper is in some of the pictures.

This was Pink Floyd’s first official photo shoot. Although a photographer by trade, Colin Prime’s other love was music, and he worked part time as a disc jockey in the evenings. It was while... read more he was hanging around the clubs he came across a group just starting out called Pink Floyd (Nick Mason, Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and Richard Wright). This led to the band’s first photo shoot, and Syd Barrett used one of his photos as the design for the back cover of the band’s debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

David Gilmour’s superb guitar solo during ’Comfortably Numb’. "I like live shots. They are the most effective shots because they’re the only ones that show you doing what you... read more do rather than posing for a camera." (David Gilmour in ’The Moment’)

One of a series of relaxed images taken by this very inexperienced photographer. At this point I was still a first year college student with no more than two weeks education in photography. The flash I... read more was using did not cover the width of the lens and there is fall-off both to the left and to the right. However, it is a very rare band shot from that period, and such merits inclusion here.

The idea of beds for the Momentary Lapse cover came from a line of lyric - ‘Visions of an empty bed’ (Yet Another Movie) it was more than a momentary lapse, I can tell you, more like a day... read more of complete lunacy. Or two days, as we had to shoot it twice. because of rain. But this is not the album cover; this is in fact an offshoot, a European tour poster, and I cunningly decided to put some beds ‘on the road’, tee hee, and place them in a long line down the centre stretching into the distance (it was a long tour) The road I had had in mind was one of those endless straight French roads with lines of trees on either side in order to accentuate the perspective and be properly European. Though the road in question is in Essex it looks French to me, especially with a French policeman and a ‘French’ maid who was also on the album cover. This picture is actually quite a rarity, being in normal colour whereas the published piece was a black and white version which was then hand coloured. The thing I remember most vividly was that we had the French gall to position the beds in an empty road without recourse to police or public and prayed for no interruption All hope springs eternal they say. There was no traffic, no police but there was rain, of course. Can’t have everything it seems,mad to think I could...another momentary lapse of reason, clearly.

Another piece of rare Floydiana, this stark image was a poster designed to promote the Pink Floyd exhibition, Interstellar, at the Paris Cité De La Musique in October 2003. I wasn’t sure how... read more effective this idea was and so I designed two posters in a bout of doubt, as it were, the second of which - also called Interstellar surprisingly - was a sculpture of two perfect mirror balls finely balanced one of on top of the other. The first, the bridge, was intended as a laconic comment on a band coming to the end of their illustrious career, as represented by a couple coming to literally the end of the road, the end of the relationship. It was of course this road business that was difficult to find but was finally located as part of an incomplete motorway junction just outside Madrid, Spain - at least we knew the light would be good. Apart from the very graphic nature of this image what also appealed to me was the idea of blatant nudity which would require a magnifying glass to detect. And who would bother, would you?

Wish You Were Here

A dour couple, their faces trapped in a world of their own, confined within the fish bowls, intense and distored in their separateness. No retouching here, no clever tricks, no pretence. Like the words... read more of the song.

We were asked to design a campaign image to advertise the back catalogue of Pink Floyd, well known popular music ensemble. Our resident black-frocked artiste, Finlay Cowan suggested humorously that we... read more put Pink Floyd covers on the backs of female models. He laughed nervously, thinking that this was a bit on the obvious side. We decided to body paint the covers, rather than projection or compositing, which allows the contours to follow the attractive curves of the female models. In addition they would have course have to be unclothed, thus appealing to the testosterone levels. In order to display their backs more gracefully, they needed to sit somewhere, and the edge of a swimming pool seemed very natural. The poses adopted by the girls seemed equally natural. The finished artwork was used mainly as a poster, the alternate version you see here showed one of them slipping into the pool for a quick bathe. It is otherwise very similar to the published piece.

Pink Floyd decided for Division Bell that they liked both metal and stone versions of the two heads and therefore told us to build both. Two heads, two sets of sculptures each the size of a house, same... read more but different. The metal heads were constructed to resemble the making of an aeroplane, and we photographed many times in different weather. The two favourite shots involved lights on the one hand and red flags on the other to represent the lines of communication between the heads, and it was the lights that were used on the album cover. However, I always liked the flags version because the sky was so ominous, making the heads more imposing.

A publicity shot of Pink Floyd. Nick Mason, Dave Gilmour, Roger Waters and Rick Wright.

A publicity shot of Pink Floyd. Rick Wright, Nick Mason, Roger Waters and Dave Gilmour .

A publicity shot of Pink Floyd. Rick Wright, Dave Gilmour, Roger Waters and Nick Mason.

One of the founding members of the band Pink Floyd.

One of the founding members of the band Pink Floyd.

One of the founding members of the band Pink Floyd.

Two perfect mirror balls were made by electroplating perspex hemisheres - no irregularities nor blemish. The quality of reflection was pristine so on a bright summer's day in Cambridge they reflected... read more the sky vividly like magic orbs, attracting kids from all across the meadows who were having picnics with their families. They gathered round peering into the hidden depths with distorted faces caused by the curvature, bewitched by the brightness. The point between the spheres is an infinite regression of a reflection of reflections –infinite as is the distance between stars (Inter-stellar). This sculpture is about 8 foot high and you can make out my goodself and Rupert our photographer in the reflection. The idea comes form the two > eyeballs on Pulse DVD and also from the sculptures of Anish Kapoor.

The design for the large array of beds on a beach comes from a line in one of the songs ‘Yet Another Movie’ from the album . 'Visions of an empty bed' - wherein I reversed the single and plural... read more becoming a 'vision of empty beds'. These beds are real wrought iron Victorian hospital beds each weighed an effing ton. They are laid out in the vague shape of a riverbed, ho ho, and what you see is what you get - approx 700 hundred beds on a seashore. It took 30 people, 2 tractors,and 3 flatbeds all day to arrange them, then it rained and we had to come back two weeks later and do it all again… i make that two lapses of reason. When we’d completed the shot which was used on the cover we turned away to congratulate each other, turned back and all the beds were under water,as the tide had turned rather more quickly than we had envisaged... wet dream or what?

Photographed as a homage to the Pink Floyd album sleeve 'Animals' for the BBC series 'Britain In Pictures'. "I had always been intrigued by the place and jumped at the opportunity to see the building... read more properly. My idea was to reproduce the cover by legendary designer Storm Thorgerson. This was a challenging test for the Panasonic camera I was given by the BBC. To catch a flying pig (thrown in the air rather than flown as the real one had been) required split second timing and the camera was ont up to it. However, I was able to strip the image together using Photoshop. I am happy with the final result. It is still recognizable as a homage to 'Animals' but the decay adds an extra layer of melancholy." - Jill Furmanovsky

This was the first time I'd ever seen Pink Floyd live. They played numbers from their new album 'Atom Heart Mother'. For the first couple of numbers I stood watching and listening-then to my dismay stewards... read more started clearing photographers from the front of the stage, and at that point I hadn't taken a single picture! However, to my complete surprise, a steward took my arm and guided me up the steps at the side of the stage. Suddenly, there I was, standing practically in amongst the band-and I wasn't about to waste the opportunity, I still don't know who they thought I was!