The ultimate collection of David Bowie shootings by Frank Ockenfels III: a book you cannot miss.
Collaboration is a stunning collection of sixteen Frank Ockenfels 3’s amazing shootings with David Bowie along fifteen years. Since 1991, for the second album with Tin Machine, until a cover of Q Magazine in 2006.
It took about 20 years and no less than three attempts to publish this book. When he was still alive, Bowie himself suggested to the American photographer that there was enough stuff to think about a publication. But sometimes things don’t go right. While Ockenfels was portraying celebrities especially from the cinema and music industry (we reviewed his previous book Volume 3 here), he continued to jealously store the precious photo negatives in his studio, where he enjoyed realizing for himself big black journals, manipulating the photographs with cutouts, polaroids, sketches, drawings, bizarre handwritings, glue, scotch and ink. Some of these pages appear right inside Collaboration. In the meantime the English singer passed away and something from the archives surfaced on the Net (Frank is particularly active on his Instagram page) or appeared inside some posthumous releases, for example the Toy album and a couple of most recent boxes by Parlophone.
It is really really difficult to choose only a favourite chapter out of the sixteen. Some fans could love the ones realized to promote the official albums from the Naughtiest or the beginning of the new millennium: Outside, Earthling, Heathen and Reality. Quite good albums through which the artist presented his persona with different hairstyles, new and very different clothes and an appeal that does not regret anything from his previous glorious past.
In these chapters we can observe Bowie as a handsome and attractive dandy, elegantly and sharply dressed, to promote his musical projects. Tons of brilliant photographs that were utilized through magazines, newspapers, special issues and releases. The percentage of unpublished pics is literally high, marvellous in the result. Sometimes Bowie decided to use Frank’s work for a couple of his parallel publications, it is the case for example of the alternative, American, cover of The Buddha of Suburbia: David is sitting on an austere bed looking right in front the camera. But quite every photo is presented with a variant of different stills, at least a couple, but sometimes even dozens of them.
It’s the first time we can observe the full session of David collaborating with Placebo (inside a studio and on the top of a skyscraper) for the song Without You I’m Nothing and with Angelo Badalamenti for A Foggy Day In London Town. And again the unreleased session titled The Berlin Project, where Bowie plays with his shadow on a wall, trying to reach a mood really close the black and white classic masterpieces of the cinema (see The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Psycho).
Through the chapters of the book we can observe two David Bowie’s versions. As a rockstar in his best attitude driving his new albums and looking simply beautiful and good. But we can also enjoy his chemistry with the photographer, experimenting with the camera and its manipulations. The result is a wonderful monster with just a little of make up and probably a host of hairdressers behind him. In the two Earthling sessions, and in the Reality one, David’s face is sometimes unfocused or overlain with other frames. Ockenfels often likes to be inspired by Francis Bacon’s paintings: David sits on a throne surrounded by a cage, exactly like the Pope in the series by the Irish painter, who in turn was strictly based on Diego Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X. Again the point of view of the camera is warped, unreal and twisted. The result is something that surprises the observer page after page, through the whole book.
But there’s also a step on the stage of the Heathen Tour, when the singer performed in the five boroughs of New York City, and again a walk through Washington Square.
256 beautiful pages inside an excellent packaging, a large format in hardbook, with graphics designed by Beth Middleworth. Collaboration has been printed and bound in Italy by D’Auria Printing for the American publishing company Abrams Books. And an interesting foreword by the Rolling Stone journalist Joe Levy.
Frank stopped to take photos of Bowie exactly ten years before Blackstar and David’s death, an apparent disappearance, because inside this volume we can find and enjoy him again, recall his genius and remember his exquisite taste.
Collaboration will be published on 4th November 2025 for Abrams Books.
