David Bowie, Masayoshi Sukita's unpublished photographs in a book chronicling their relationship

The publishing house Lullabit has published a book featuring previously unpublished photographs by Masayoshi Sukita (Nogata, 1938) of the great singer David Bowie (London, 1947 - New York, 2016), with whom Sukita had a close and fruitful professional relationship. The volume is titled David Bowie by Sukita and chronicles for the first time the relationship between one of the most important icons of the 20th century and the Japanese master photographer who immortalized him for more than 40 years. Published in Italy as a world premiere and narrated in the first person, with exclusive anecdotes and episodes, texts and images also previously unpublished, the book chronologically traces the bond between Bowie and Sukita against the backdrop of the international music and cultural scene since the early 1970s.

Sukita arrived in London in 1972, fascinated by pop culture and its new heroes, and in the English capital he saw the poster for one of David Bowie’s first masterpieces, The Man Who Sold the World, on the street: the first shoot with the London-based singer came shortly thereafter, and just a few shots were enough to build a professional and human relationship that was destined to last forty years. Sukita followed the evolution of Ziggy Stardust, in his successes first in London then in New York, to his triumphs in Japan. The two lost touch during the period when Bowie lived and worked in Los Angeles, but his return to Europe, specifically to Berlin in the company of Iggy Pop, marked a first stage of rapprochement. In 1977, during the promotional tour of Iggy Pop’s album The Idiot, Sukita managed to meet both of them. The result was a now-legendary photo session that would lead to the birth of the Heroes cover (the photograph depicting Bowie for this record is probably Sukita’s most famous). In the years to follow, the collaboration between the two continued with both professional shoots, such as studio shoots in the 1990s, and more private ones, such as the 1980 one of a vacation in Kyoto, only to end with Bowie’s untimely death in 2016.

The book consists of 128 pages with more than 100 color and black-and-white photographs on matte coated paper, in a 23 x 31 cm format with soft touch hardback cover with embossed polish. The price is 29.50 euros and it can be purchased on the Lullabit website.

Pictured: one of the photos of David Bowie taken by Masayoshi Sukita

David Bowie, Masayoshi Sukita's unpublished photographs in a book chronicling their relationship

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