H.R. Giger: Debbie Harry Metamorphosis: Creating the Visual Concept for KooKoo

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R Giger's contribution to Debbie Harry's first solo project and possibly her most ambitious of the five albums she has recorded. The reason for this outrage was printed on the cover: a large portrait of Debbie Harry with her face skewered by a number of overlarge acupuncture needles.

The album cov­er is prob­a­bly bet­ter known than the music inside, and no won­der: it fea­tures Harry’s face pierced hor­i­zon­tal­ly by four spikes. Captivated by how photography can bottle up a memory forever, his work aimed to keep things as candid as possible, from his still-bandmate and former-partner Debbie Harry to strangers on the street, the result is raw images, people at their most honest. Stein chronicled the band’s early beginnings on camera, from the nascent New York punk scene to the international celebrities they worked with, including Andy Warhol. He helped design the haunting imagery for Swiss psyche rockers Walpurgis’ 1969 album, The Shiver , Emerson Lake, and Palmer’s gold-selling 1973 LP, Brain Salad Surgery , and the sleeve for French prog-rockers Magma’s 1978 record Attahk . After attending college, she worked various jobs—as a dancer, a Playboy Bunny and a secretary (including at the BBC in New York)—before her breakthrough in the music industry.You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. She has become and still remains a true national treasure, one whose influence continues to impact the worlds of music, fashion and art. The stories behind the collaboration are really cool and it’s finely printed to capture the richness and subtle details of Giger/Stein’s compositions. Though he didn’t know the group–Giger pre­ferred to lis­ten to jazz–he agreed to the cov­er and to the pro­mo videos, even direct­ing when the orig­i­nal direc­tor didn’t show.

He has also collaborated with artists including Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, William Burroughs and Devo.

A beautiful coffee table art book chronicling the extraordinary collaboration between Debbie Harry and H. Yet if the album art was one thing, then the music videos were when Giger and Harry went full-blown expressive.