In 1995, photographer Gavin Evans was commissioned by Time Out magazine in London to shoot David Bowie, during the recording of ‘Outside’. The results were a series of distinctive portraits that became widely used and well-known, and are currently on display in Harpa’s new fourth-floor gallery….
…the show’s central image is something darker—a close-up shot in which Bowie gazes at the viewer with a vulnerable, almost existential expression. It’s a particularly humane portrait of the singer that’s very much at odds with the stylized characters for which he became famous.
“When I looked back at these ones,” says Gavin, “I thought: ‘I’ve never seen him like this before.’ I don’t mean photographically, but in himself. I think he was very much allowing himself just to be. He wasn’t playing the public persona—he was being less controlled, in that way.”
Two years later, Gavin got an email from Bowie’s management about the image. “At first I thought ‘Oh shit, are they going to ask me to stop using it?’” he recalls. “But as I read further down, it said that this was David’s favourite image of himself. He wanted to hang it in his Manhattan office, behind his desk. I thought, ‘Hang on, he’s connecting with this image?’ Some of the other shots from the session, like the shouting and ‘shh!’ images, are perfectly good shots, and I can see why people like them… but the one he chose had qualities that made it very personal for me. The fact that he felt it so personally as well, and acknowledged that it showed him—it’s a huge compliment, I suppose.”
Despite the naturalistic look of the shoot, Bowie still had some creative input. “When we first met,” says Gavin, “he was wearing loafers and chinos—I was quite surprised how casually dressed he was. But then he brought out these blue contact lenses, and I thought: ‘Ah, here’s the twist.’ When people see the photographs now, they often ask why we did the shoot with the blue contacts, because his eyes were such a distinctive part of his look. That was all him—he was still playing with his image….”
