At Lightroom, King’s Cross, six photographers who helped define David Bowie’s visual mythology reunited to tell the stories behind the images that shaped a generation. What unfolded was part masterclass, part confession, and part séance — a rare night where the people behind the lens finally stepped into the light.

Bowie Nights: Behind the Lens — hosted by journalist and author Miranda Sawyer — brought together Geoff MacCormack, Kevin Cummins, Richard Young, Denis O’Regan, Tony McGee and Chris Duffy, each responsible for some of the most recognisable Bowie imagery ever created.

Across decades, continents, personas and haircuts, these photographers weren’t just documenting a star — they were helping him build the visual language that made Bowie Bowie. And last night, they finally compared notes.

Chris Duffy — son of the legendary Brian Duffy and guardian of the Ziggy, Aladdin Sane and Scary Monsters archives — summed up the collective experience in one line:

“You put a camera in front of him and he just took off.”

Bowie understood the camera better than most photographers. He knew what an image could do, how it could travel, and how it could shape a narrative long after the shutter clicked.

Denis O’Regan recalled Bowie casually planning future usage mid‑shoot:

“He’d say ‘we’ll keep this one for the book’, or ‘this could be used for the press’.”

Richard Young, who captured Bowie during the Thin White Duke era, brought along a stark, intimate image from Bowie’s 1980 run in The Elephant Man — a reminder that his artistry extended far beyond the studio and stage.

Denis O’Regan, Bowie’s official tour photographer, shared a story that cut through the mystique: Bowie, global icon, stuck in a tuk‑tuk with exhaust fumes blasting directly into his face. O’Regan laughed:

“The thing that people didn’t realise about him was just how normal and sweet he was.”

Geoff MacCormack — Bowie’s childhood friend and travel companion from 1973–76, offered one of the night’s most revealing insights.

He showed a photo of Bowie writing lyrics for Station to Station at Cherokee Studios in LA, explaining:

“He lived it and wrote it as he was living it… this was new territory.”

MacCormack drew a line from that album straight into the Berlin era — a creative pivot point captured not in a studio diary, but in a candid moment between friends.

Tony McGee, who worked with Bowie for over 30 years, shared a wonderfully odd detail: a portrait of Bowie grinning beside a radio, tuned not to music, but to the BBC World Service Shipping Forecast. Strong gusts near Orkney. Bowie in hysterics. It’s a reminder that behind the icon was a man who found joy in the mundane — and who loved a joke as much as a perfectly lit frame.

Chris Duffy also broke down the technical wizardry behind the Aladdin Sane cover — tungsten light, long exposure, and a technique borrowed from the 1960s. Hearing the process described by someone who was there felt like watching a magician reveal a trick that somehow becomes more magical once you know how it works.

Behind the Lens is part of Lightroom’s wider Bowie Nights season, running May–September 2026 and tied to the immersive production David Bowie: You’re Not Alone.

The show, created by Mark Grimmer and Tom Wexler, pulls from thousands of hours of archive footage, reconfiguring Bowie’s performances using Lightroom’s spatial audio system designed by Gareth Fry. It’s authorised by the Bowie Estate, and early audiences have described it as the closest thing to time travel they’ve ever experienced.

Buy ‘Bowie Nights’ tickets here

Buy ‘David Bowie: You’re Not Alone’ tickets here

For one evening, the people who helped shape Bowie’s visual identity weren’t hidden behind their cameras, they were storytellers, historians, and custodians of a legacy that continues to evolve. They showed Bowie as a collaborator, a friend, a joker, a workaholic, a visionary, and a man who understood the power of an image better than anyone else in pop history and in doing so, they reminded us why we’re still talking about him, and still trying to capture him, long after the flashbulbs faded.