Bowie Photographer Denis O’Regan Preview

Tomorrow’s guest for my weekly interview is photographer Denis O’Regan, the man who photographed Bowie more than any other photographer and whose images documented Bowie both onstage and behind the scenes over more than two decades.

When I interviewed Denis, the immediate occasion was the publication of his 2025 book, David Bowie by Denis O’Regan. Published by ACC Art Books, the 276-page collection draws on photographs taken across two decades and more than 200 Bowie concerts around the world, including previously unseen images, accompanied by Denis’s own recollections. Denis was Bowie’s official photographer on the entire 1983 Serious Moonlight tour and also photographed him extensively during the Glass Spider tour and at other points in his career.

Our conversation ranges across that history, from Denis seeing Bowie perform as Ziggy Stardust at Hammersmith Odeon in 1973 to his experiences traveling the world with Bowie a decade later. We discuss the famous crowd photographs from the Serious Moonlight tour, photographing Bowie near the Berlin Wall, the differences between shooting concerts in the film and digital eras, and the unusual access that allowed Denis to photograph Bowie away from the stage as well as on it.

But there is now another reason the timing of the interview is particularly appropriate.

Denis has transformed hundreds of photographs from his Bowie archive into Bowie: Unseen | Unheard, a new immersive experience that premiered as part of Venice Immersive at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.

As Xan Brooks reported for The Guardian, Bowie: Unseen | Unheard is an immersive spatial-sound documentary and a personal portrait of Bowie by Denis. It unfolds across eight screens and 84 hidden speakers, combining 12 Bowie songs with Denis’s commentary and nearly 800 photographs. The project was developed with the support and cooperation of the Bowie estate.

AV Magazine reports that sound designer and composer Nick Ryan created the soundscape, which incorporates Bowie’s music as well as original compositions by Mike Garson. The production also uses L-Acoustics’ L-ISA spatial-audio technology to surround the audience with sound rather than simply accompanying a conventional display of photographs.

The idea is not merely to enlarge Denis’s pictures and put music behind them. The sound and images are intended to place viewers within the environments Denis photographed: the anticipation before Bowie walked onstage, the scale of an arena, backstage conversations and other fleeting moments captured during Denis’s years around Bowie. Some of the photographs have never previously been seen.

That makes Bowie: Unseen | Unheard an intriguing extension of what Denis and I discuss in tomorrow’s interview. His photographs are documents of performances, but they also preserve what was happening around the performances: Bowie traveling, preparing, interacting with people and inhabiting spaces that an audience normally never saw.

Denis told The Guardian that he believes Bowie himself would have embraced the project, pointing to Bowie’s longstanding interest in technology and experimentation, from BowieNet and Bowie Bonds to his work across music, mime, theater, film and visual art. In Denis’s view, that willingness to work across forms makes Bowie particularly suited to an immersive presentation of this kind.

Bowie: Unseen | Unheard is being presented at Venice Immersive on Lazzaretto Vecchio, an island near the Venice Lido, as one of 69 extended-reality works selected for this year’s program. The Guardian notes that Venice Immersive itself is intended to bridge emerging technology and traditional narrative cinema, making the setting especially appropriate for a Bowie project built around combining photography, music, spoken recollection and new audiovisual technology.

Bowie: Unseen | Unheard runs at Venice Immersive through September 12.

Unfortunately, at this point, Bowie: Unseen | Unheard remains unseen by me. I did not travel to Venice to see it. That said, you can see Denis talk with me tomorrow, so be sure to come back!