“Hand in hand in love with love uh-huH”
You may remember a rather tasty magazine from the late 90s called huH. It was a delightful thing to look upon and that was in no small measure down to designer Jérôme Curchod and the absurdly talented Vaughan Oliver of v23/4AD fame, as Creative Director.
The pictures and text were both of a very high standard too, and the September 1995 issue was particularly special on account of the world’s most beautiful man adorning the cover. This issue contained a great interview with Bowie (conducted by huH's Managing Editor Dean Kuipers), accompanied by a very unusual set of pictures taken by Kevin Kerslake.
The unofficial, but rather splendid fan page: David Bowie News (DBN), has a brief interview with huH Editorial Director, Mark Blackwell, along with previously-unseen shots from his '90s Polaroid diary of Bowie being put into a cage for the shoot and pictures of DB with the huH and Ray Gun team.
Ray Gun was another game-changing magazine, apparently named after the Moonage Daydream lyric. They had their own equally stunning Bowie cover published the following month, followed up with another in March 1997.
Nick Vernon of DBN asked Mark Blackwell about his memories of working with David for both Raygun and huH...
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“We loved working with Bowie - and we did many cover stories and other projects with him over the years - because we always knew we’d end up with much more than just the standard thing of a singer or a musician hyping whatever their latest project happened to be and answering the same questions every other magazine would be asking in the exact same way. With Bowie it would always become some grand artistic collaboration of sorts - the photos would be unique and beautiful and the interview would be deep and thought-provoking. We’d match him up with great writers like Dean Kuipers and amazing photographers like Kevin Kerslake or Ian Davies, and magic would always happen, because he was a true artist and one of those rare souls you could honestly call a 'visionary'. He took these collaborations with us very seriously, never approaching them as simply something he 'had to do to promote his new record' - plus he had a great sense of humor that always came through.”
“As far as this particular day at Smashbox goes, one thing that very much stands out is that over the course of all my years of writing and editing music stories and going to photo shoots, I'm almost positive this was the only time I ever actually stepped into a photographer's shot with an artist during an actual shoot. I'm guessing it's the same for Marvin Jarrett and Randy Bookasta - we just never did that because we all probably felt it would seem unprofessional or intrusive or just plain silly. In this case, however, Bowie cheerfully invited us to come over and jump into a shot with him, and it really does reflect that sense of warmth and collaboration he exuded - making the people around him a part of his artistic process. In person he was exactly as you'd hope he'd be: charming, suave, smart, and super cool. I'm so glad we did it, because I treasure these photos with him, what a cool memento to have from this era.”
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Many thanks to Mark Blackwell and to Kevin Kerslake for the excellent photos from this shoot and to Nick Vernon for letting us run his exclusive. Go here for the full thing with more pictures from the session.
#BowiehuH #BowieRayGun #UnofficialDBNews