About Gavin Evans

"I create man in my own image." There are countless portraits of David Bowie, but the 1995 session in London wrote a piece of popular history. On assignment for Time Out magazine, British photographer Gavin Evans had forty minutes with… Read more

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Work Info

The legendary 1995 photo shoot The Session shows David Bowie in multifaceted poses, captured by British photographer Gavin Evans. These iconic images appeared in Rolling Stone and a Sotheby’s catalog. LUMAS unites three shots in a lenticular piece that changes with the viewer’s angle. Evans believes no portrait shows a single truth—each image also reflects the photographer himself.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

"I create man in my own image."
There are countless portraits of David Bowie, but the 1995 session in London wrote a piece of popular history. On assignment for Time Out magazine, British photographer Gavin Evans had forty minutes with Bowie - and produced what are now among the most widely recognised images of the musician. From playful to daydreaming to lost in thought, Bowie revealed many sides of himself under Evans's influence. The work has since appeared at The Grammys and on the cover of Rolling Stone, and in 2021 one of the portraits became the first photograph written directly onto the Ethereum blockchain.
Bowie - The Session, sits within a forty-year career that has moved between portrait photography, digital art and media philosophy. Evans's subjects include Nick Cave, Björk, Iggy Pop, Massive Attack, Daniel Craig, Juliette Binoche and Derek Jarman, with commissions from the New York Times, the Sunday Times, Amnesty International, Channel 4 and the Edinburgh International Festival. His 1992 project dis - made with the Quantel Paintbox alongside contributions from Nobel laureates Wole Soyinka and Joseph Brodsky, and the playwright Arthur Miller - foretold the coming era of imperceptible digital manipulation more than a decade before the technology became commonplace.
Now based in Berlin, Evans continues to work across photography, digital art and broadcast. On portraiture he says "Photographer and subject- both personalities reside within the frame."

Our LUMAS piece combines three photographs from The Session into one breathtaking lenticular that uses a series of tiny vertical lenses to create a spectacular effect. Depending on where viewers are standing, they will see one of three distinct Bowie poses. This dazzling work of art underlines Gavin Evans’ philosophy, who is of the opinion that you cannot portray a person with a single flawless photograph. “Both personalities reside within the frame,” he says, emphasising that every image is also a manifestation of the photographer. Over the course of a career spanning decades, Evans has photographed countless celebrities, including Ai Wei Wei, Juliette Binoche, Gary Oldman, Daniel Craig, Björk and Nick Cave. “I create man in my own image,” he reflects on his creative process.

VITA

Gavin Evans was born in 1964 in Sunderland, England. He has exhibited his photographs in renowned museums including MoMA and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 2015, Evans created the campaign for the Edinburgh International Festival. He has worked for Vogue, The New York Times, and The Guardian. He now lives and works in Berlin.