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Storm Thorgerson: “It came about when we were commissioned to advertise the back catalogue of Pink Floyd in 1996. There’s an incredible sense of humour in the Floyd camp, and they decided that the back catalogue should be literally, the catalogue on the backs.” “So they commissioned me to photograph it, for a promotional poster”.
“It was difficult to know how to use the album cover images again. You can’t distort them too much, or they become unrecognisable. The “backs” idea seemed to be a nice way to re-present the images in a slightly different context, but still relatively clearly. It took us forever to paint the girls: they had to be still for five or six hours while their backs were painted by the very expert Phyllis Cohen.”
“The covers were originally going to be painted on the backs of boys and girls, but that presented us with a problem, because each back is representing an album cover, and album covers are all the same size and shape. We needed uniformity, and girls and boys’ backs are obviously quite different. We had to choose one or the other, and we chose girls – probably because we’re boys. It is a questionable thing on a PC level, and the photo has received some critical observations – most particularly by my partner. But most women I’ve shown it to don’t mind it. I just think that girls backs are more elegant than men’s backs, and I was going for elegance and shape here.”
SOURCE: Front Page News Music
