The Prettiest Star: See Rare Photos From David Bowie’s Early-’70s Golden Years

In 1974, photographer Steve Schapiro received a once-in-a-lifetime invitation to a private photo session with David Bowie. The fateful shoot led to a fruitful creative collaboration that elicited some of Bowie’s most iconic images, including the album art for Station to Station and Low. Incredibly, one powerful image, of Bowie dressed in blue slacks and a cropped shirt painted with diagonal white stripes, was referenced 40 years later in Bowie’s haunting final music video, “Lazarus.”

Now Schapiro is releasing the coffeetable photo book simply titled Bowie (which he started compiling on October last year, before the singer’s shocking death), featuring mostly never-before-published images from these 1970s sessions. Check out a selection of the striking photographs here, along with Schapiro’s own words. (All photographs by Steve Schapiro, from Bowie, published by powerHouse Books.)