#MCM: David Bowie as The Sphinx

May 11, 2015

#MCM: David Bowie as The Sphinx

Man Crush Monay

David Bowie As The

The SPhiNX

By Brain Ward, 1969

Vintage Files

The Story Behind the PICTURES

This photo shoot of David Bowie was taken by Brian Ward in 1971, also photographing Bowie for his cover of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars. The b costumes and the jewels we're brought for Bowie by Brain. Bowie had entertained the he idea of choosing the Egyptian look for his on stage costume. However, instead Bowie opted for his famous persona Ziggy Stardust.

"I don't know where I'm going from here, but I promise it won't be boring." - David Bowie

"Many rock and pop musicians who came of age in the sixties were keen on Aleister Crowley, the Edwardian libertine whose fascination with sex, drugs and spiritual arcana seemed to foreshadow their own. (Crowley’s face appears on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, right next to Mae West’s). Bowie went further than most, lacing his songs with reference to Crowley and mystical symbolism. Bowie dressed as an initiate into one of Crowley’s quasi-Masonic cults for a photo shoot with Brian Ward in 1969, images from which later adorned albums legitimate and not." (The Globe and Mail)