Denis O’Regan: Photographing Bowie Around the World
On the occasion of the release of his photobook, David Bowie by Denis O’Regan, I speak with photographer Denis O’Regan about his extraordinary history photographing Bowie and the experiences behind an archive that spans decades of Bowie’s career. Denis traces that relationship back to 1973, when he saw Bowie perform as Ziggy Stardust at the Hammersmith Odeon. The following year, while working at a newspaper shop near Olympic Studios, he learned that Bowie was recording across the street, retrieved his camera and photographed him outside the studio. Denis describes how his interests in music, photography and travel subsequently came together in a career that eventually took him around the world with Bowie.
A major focus of our conversation is Denis’s experience as Bowie’s photographer on the 1983 Serious Moonlight and 1987 Glass Spider world tours. He recalls the extraordinary access he was given and explains how this enabled him to photograph Bowie not only performing but traveling, waiting, relaxing and interacting with the people and places around him. Denis discusses his personal relationship with Bowie, including the discovery that “Where’s Denis?” had become a recurring Bowie catchphrase whenever he wanted something photographed.
Denis describes witnessing Bowie’s enormous growth in popularity during the Serious Moonlight tour as Let’s Dance became a worldwide success and arenas gave way to stadiums. We discuss photographs that captured both Bowie and the vast audiences he was attracting, including images that subsequently appeared in publications such as Time and Newsweek. He also recalls photographing Bowie in Berlin during the Glass Spider tour, when people gathered on the other side of the Berlin Wall to listen to the concert.
We discuss Denis’s approach to documenting Bowie away from the stage and the contrast between the public performer and the person he encountered during everyday life on tour. Denis also talks about Ricochet, the documentary filmed during the 1983 tour, and Bowie’s experiences traveling through places where he was not always immediately recognized.
Denis explains how dramatically the mechanics of photography changed during his career. He describes shooting film with manually focused cameras, choosing individual moments carefully, carrying separate cameras for color and black-and-white film, and sometimes waiting weeks before seeing the resulting photographs. He later became an early user of autofocus and digital photography and describes both the opportunities and new demands those technologies created.
Finally, we discuss why the tours were documented so extensively. The photographs supplied approved images to the press, promoted Bowie internationally, provided material for books and other projects, and created a lasting visual record. Denis explains that he particularly valued the ordinary moments because they provided a contrast between Bowie onstage and the person traveling behind the scenes.