David Bowie Photo Exhibit in New York Extended Through Next Week
There’s been so much feverish chatter about the remarkable “David Bowie Is” exhibition of the artist’s outfits, photos and other ephemera — which recently landed at the Brooklyn Museum after traveling the world since 2013 — that people may be confused by the presence of another amazing Bowie exhibit, this one called simply “Bowie” and containing 40-odd stunning photos from throughout his career, across the river at the Morrison Hotel Gallery in Manhattan.
(Top photo: Barry Schultz/Morrison Hotel Gallery)
The show, which features a combination of iconic and rarely seen images from a murderer’s row of photographers including Brian Duffy (who photographed the covers of the “Aladdin Sane” and “Scary Monsters” albums), Lynn Goldsmith Bob Gruen, Guido Harari, Terry O’Neill, Neal Preston, Mick Rock, Masayoshi Sukita, Barry Schultz, Barrie Wentzell and not least, Bowie’s longtime friend and backing singer Geoff MacCormack (a.k.a. Mac Cormack and Warren Peace).
The show was recently extended until March 30, although the gallery warns that some of the photos that have been sold will be removed beginning Saturday the 24th. Best of all, admission is free.
(Photo: Geoff MacCormack/Morrison Hotel Gallery)
Photos ranging from the early 1970s to the 2000s are present but the emphasis is on Bowie’s golden decade, with him in Ziggy guise, as a soul man, as the Thin White Duke, during the “Heroes” and “Scary Monsters” eras, and his blonde phase during the “Let’s Dance” period — one classic shot from that latter era shows Bowie and Tina Turner attempting to drink from the same bottle of champagne while Keith Richards stands next to them, hoisting his usual Jack Daniel’s. Other highlights include Sukita’s famous shot of Bowie in full Aladdin Sane regalia standing in front of the art deco doors at New York’s Radio City Music Hall; a black and white of a late ‘70s Bowie seated in a photo studio with a little Scottie dog in an identical chair next to him; and an odd nighttime double-exposure of him during the Thin White Duke era, taken in the desert during the filming of “The Man Who Fell to Earth,” in which he’s throwing sand but due to the double-image, it looks like he’s got angel wings.
(Photo: Geoff MacCormack/Morrison Hotel Gallery)
Yet the most striking image in the gallery actually is not hosted in the extensive collection posted on the gallery’s website, although it is featured below and in the video interview with MacCormack on the site: It’s one he took of a shirtless Aladdin-era Bowie in 1973, fast asleep on the Trans-Siberian Express, as they travelled overland from Japan to England. According to the video, the night before they’d gotten into a drinking session with some teenaged Russian soldiers, whose reaction to Bowie’s shock of bright-orange, zipper-cut hair is not mentioned in the video.
There are many more remarkable images in the exhibit, which runs through March 30.
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