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David Bowie Fan Album

UP CLOSE AND UNPUBLISHED. A ONE-OFF DAVID BOWIE [PHOTO] ALBUM 1972-1983. TEN YEARS OF VISUAL GENIUS.

It has no title, no text and was never published. It is the best book we have ever found! A unique item. An album of photographs of David Bowie taken by a fan at the very front of every major Bowie tour from 1972 to 1983. The earliest photographs (as above) capture Bowie, Mick Ronson and the Spiders on low stages with no drum riser. It could be a pub in Putney. See how brlliant it is here.

The album has been beautifully produced. The composition is excellent and appropriate but never quite professional. The early photographs were almost certainly sent away to Agfa for developing and printing. This Thin White Duke set gets a 5mm white border.

And then backstage! It seems following Bowie so closely for so long brought the reward of meeting the man in person. It's Bowie in 1980. His hair styled like it was 1965 and he looks young again.

It is a revelation. Bowie looks very real throughout. If he looked thin in professional pictures of this period - he looks emaciated here (he was living on a diet of red peppers, cocaine and milk). The photographs are taken under stage lighting and there is no retouching. They are instantly recognisable images but appearing anew, as if a layer of gloss has been removed. 

And how good is this picture? It is just remarkable. There really are some Bowie images in this album that rate alongside anything we have seen published. Seventy unseen pictures! A decade of David Bowie but also clearly a very large part of this photographer's life.

The album closes out with a set of images from the Serious Moonlight tour - Bowie's butterscotch suit bathed in pink stage light. It is a charmed book. 1972 to 1983 - golden years.

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