One of the most famous pictures in rock history is going up for auction on Bonfire night.
Bonhams aren’t understating about the impact of the image in question, using the Mona Lisa of Pop as the title for their November 5 sale from the Brian Duffy archive.
The Mona Lisa here is the cover image from David Bowie’s 1973 album, Aladdin Sane, taken by photographer Brian Duffy and on offer here in a dye transfer artwork print.
Duffy was one of three photographers, alongside David Bailey and Terrence Donovan, seen as emblematic of Swinging London, an explosion of music, art, culture and fashion in the early 1960s.
He photographed the Beatles, wore black, and helped explode the rather stiff, upper-class world of British art. For most of his career he was known simply as Duffy.
He worked first in fashion, and by the 80s was making stylish New Romantic pop videos.
In 1973 he started a long working partnership with David Bowie that produced a number of iconic images taking Bowie from his Ziggy Stardust era to the clown suit of Scary Monsters.
This is the most famous.
Get the image, and the machine that captured it too. Duffy's camera is also for sale. Images courtesy of Bonhams.
And, if it climbs above an estimated range of £250,000 to £300,000 then it will become the most valuable ever album art.
In 2020, the original image used on the cover of Led Zeppelin's debut album, a doomy, dramatic picture derived from pictures of the 1937 Hindenburg Zeppelin crash.
In 1979, Brian Duffy suddenly quit photographer, and tried to burn his collected negatives: a complaint to the local council about the smell of the fire stopped the scheme.
This image has long been treasured. It was shown for many years in the V&A’s Bowie show.
The picture is a true collaboration. Bowie told Duffy the album would be called A Lad Insane, Duffy switched it to Aladdin Sane; makeup artist Pierre La Roche worked on a lightning concept from Bowie, then Duffy suggested a bigger bolt. Elements were added after the fact by airbrush artist Phillip Castle.
David Bowie was the opposite of an overnight sensation. He’d been plugging away since his debut releases during the beat boom of 1963 and 64.
But The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in 1972 and a huge touring programme meant that when this picture was taken he was on top of the world.
The first single from Aladdin Sane, The Jean Genie, remains a defining Bowie tune, and the album itself went straight to the top of the UK charts and made the top 20 in the US.
Alongside this most famous of pop portraits, Bonhams are selling the image from the interior gatefold (£150,000 to £200,000); the Hasselblad camera used to take the shots (£10,000 to £15,000) and even the stool on which Bowie sat (£500 to £700).
The nine lot sale closes on November 5.
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