With the benefit of hindsight I can now say the I think this image, along with Elegy (The Nice), was a turning point for me" - Storm Thorgerson I am asked more about the GiGi cover, which is a fasle trail, or a red herring.
The rotation of the group mebers is the icing on the cake, though I am not always sure how much it is detected. The artwork was rather amateurishly executed, with Stanley knife and ruler, and suffered from my lack of control. "Physically it is like a window, metaphorically it´s an endless set of pictures, an endless set of layers, going back and back, regressing endlessly. If you look closely at the last sixth picture on the wall, it actually is the cover-design for "A Saucerful Of Secrets" This meant that there were five pictures in this visual optical effect, with each a different placement of the band-members, in what looks like a rotation, but not quite. He wanted to use the bandmembers in the frames, but rearrange them in each frame going into infinitessimality. This is a well known effect that can be obtained by using cameras and mirrors (?) in photography (Bohemian Rhapsody video).īut Storm wanted more than that. In this case, Floyd had become more layered in their expression and this psychological aspect spawned the idea, inspired by his then girlfriend Libby, of using what is called the "Droste effect", named after a dutch cocoa box which shows this same effect on its front. Then they would brainstorm ideas for images that emerged from listening to the music and the titles of the songs and the album. Hipgnosis usually received early previews of the music on the records they were to cover design and the title. My copy shown in pictures here, is an early pressing, the third I believe and in completely mint and unplayed condition. So in the case of Ummagumma, an original UK Harvest is preferable. The design may change a bit over time or text aaded, removed etc. When I am looking for Hipgnosis covers for my collection, I tend to go for the original pressing of the cover art (not as much the earliest pressing of the record itself, unless I really dig the music itself). The designs of the studio albums are all very iconic and legendary and this one is no exception. But it seems to me that whenever Floyd called upon Storm, he would kick himself into an even higher gear than with other artists. "Ummagumma" was the third time that Hipgnosis did a cover-design for Floyd (After A Saucerful Of Secrets & More) and they had already become more daring in their designs, if not yet as coherent and iconic as a few years later. No wonder, that Storm and Hipgnosis went on to become so closely linked to the image of Pink Floyd, through Storm´s surrealistic sense of art. Storm went to school with Roger Waters for instance. Storm Thorgerson and his artgroup Hipgnosis, was a close confidant of the guys in Pink Floyd from way back in the earliest days of the bands existence.
0 kommentar(er)
