A print of a rarely seen original colour transparency image from Brian Duffy’s photo session for David Bowie’s world-famous 1973 album ‘Aladdin Sane’, has been gifted to the V&A by the Duffy Archive. The gift celebrates the V&A’s best-selling David Bowie is exhibition welcoming 2 million visitors during the final stop on its global tour, at the Brooklyn Museum in New York closing 15 July 2018.
Since 2013, David Bowie is has travelled to eleven venues in ten countries, becoming the most-visited international touring show in the V&A’s 165-year history. The record visitor figure and gift were announced by museum’s Chairman Nicholas Coleridge CBE during the V&A’s annual Summer Party, organised in partnership with Harrods.
Brian Duffy is widely considered to be one of the UK’s most creative photographers. His cutting-photographs from the 1960s-70s provide a fascinating record one of the most creative eras in British history. Duffy’s creative partnership with Bowie continued for a number of years, with Duffy subsequently producing imagery for the albums ‘Lodger’ (1979) and ‘Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)’ (1980).
The V&A worked with the Duffy Archive in 2013 to select a previously unpublished David Bowie ‘Eyes Open’ image from the Aladdin Sane contact sheet as the lead image for the exhibition.
Around 312,000 visitors saw David Bowie is at the V&A in London, where the museum opened late to cope with demand to view the sell-out show. The exhibition was also the subject of a feature film, David Bowie is happening now.
