Twenty years before “Moonage Daydream” was a sprawling documentary film about David Bowie‘s life and art, it was a massive photo book focusing on his Ziggy Stardust years, with photos by Mick Rock — his exclusive photographer at the time — and an introduction and commentary written by both of them.
The limited-edition book was snapped up quickly and for years has fetched horrifying prices on the secondary market. But original publisher Genesis Books — which specializes in such state-of-the-art photography books —is releasing a 20th anniversary edition of the book today (Oct. 4, 2022).
Where the film focuses on Bowie’s entire life, the book is entirely about the rise and fall of the Ziggy Stardust character in 1972 and 1973 — “Eighteen months, that’s all it was,” Bowie writes in the book. Alongside over 600 photographs taken by Rock, Bowie’s provides commentary on the creation and proliferation of the character that, in no understatement, changed rock music.
“Ziggy Stardust blazed briefly but intensely, and I am delighted to see his life and times as a rock’n’roll star immortalised in this book,” Bowie wrote of the first edition. For more information see http://www.BowieBook.
“The idea of a larger-than-life rock figure struck me around the end of 1970. For me, and several of my friends, the Seventies were the start of the Twenty First Century. The main platform would be, other than shoes, “We are the future, now.” And the one way of celebrating that was to create it by the only means at our disposal. With, of course, a rock’n’roll band.” – David Bowie
“I would literally draw out on paper with a crayon or felt tip pen the shape of a guitar solo: the one in ‘Moonage Daydream’, for instance, started out as a flat line that became a fat megaphone-type shape and ended as sprays of disassociated and broken lines. Mick Ronson could take something like that and actually bloody play it, bring it to life. Very impressive. That’s what it all looks like from way over here. Very impressive.” – David Bowie
