Care for the original.
Negatives, transparencies, contact sheets and prints are held under archival conditions, catalogued and digitised.
MICK ROCK
THE ESTATEPhotography. Film. Cultural history.
A life in images
The artist.
The archive.
The enduring image.
The Mick Rock Estate preserves and researches a body of work that shaped the way music is seen.
Explore selected works
01 Selected works
Presence. Performance.
Transformation.
Across five decades, Mick made thousands of frames and countless unforgettable photographs: intimate sessions, defining album covers and images that became icons of an era. No selection can contain the full scope of his work or reduce his genius to a handful of photographs.
David Bowie
Ziggy Stardust — mirror portrait
Queen
Queen II — cover portrait
Lou Reed
Transformer
Debbie Harry
Studio portrait
View the complete selectionClose the extended selection
Syd Barrett
Syd Barrett at home
Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop on stage
David Bowie
“Life on Mars?”
Queen
Sheer Heart Attack-era portrait
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Tim Curry, Patricia Quinn and Nell Campbell
Ramones
End of the Century
Selected photographs, 1969–1980. Images may be opened for a closer view and curatorial notes.
02 The archive
Beyond the
familiar frame.
The complete photographic archive of Mick Rock is preserved and administered by the Estate.
Original negatives and transparencies, contact sheets, vintage and reference prints, Polaroids, publications, moving-image materials and related documentation preserve the decisions and encounters behind more than five decades of photographic practice.
The Estate brings these materials into relation: researching sessions, tracing the history of individual works and opening new paths for exhibitions and scholarship.
Discuss an archive projectEstablish the context.
Attribution, provenance and print status are established through study of the original material.
Bring the archive into view.
Museum loans, institutional displays and touring exhibitions are developed with curators and institutions.
Publish with authority.
The Estate supports monographs, catalogues and editorial projects and administers reproduction rights.
Build lasting partnerships.
Long-term collaborations connect the archive with museums, archives and cultural organisations.
Support new research.
Supervised access is available to scholars, curators and researchers by arrangement with the Estate.
03 The photographer
Mick Rock1944—2021
A singular eye.
A life in collaboration.
Mick Rock photographed musicians as artists in the act of becoming. His portraits attend to both the public performance and the person behind it.
Born in London in 1944, Rock studied Medieval and Modern Languages at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge. Romantic literature, French New Wave cinema, Impressionism and the wider visual culture of the period informed an approach to photography that was instinctive, intimate and alert to the expressive possibilities of an image.
After Cambridge he attended the London Film School. He supported himself through modelling and acting, wrote for Rolling Stone and worked with the graphic design group Hipgnosis. Photographs of his Cambridge friend Syd Barrett in 1969 led him to devote himself increasingly to photography.
Continue the biography
From 1969 to 1975, Rock worked with David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Queen, and photographed Rory Gallagher, Thin Lizzy, Ozzy Osbourne, Lindsay Kemp, Bryan Ferry, Mott the Hoople, Ray Davies and Peter Gabriel. His unusual access allowed him to move between public performance and private exchange.
As Bowie’s official photographer in 1972–1973, he worked across stage, studio and private life. Their collaboration also extended to moving image: Rock filmed, directed and produced the promotional films for “John, I’m Only Dancing”, “The Jean Genie”, “Space Oddity” and “Life on Mars?”.
His album photographs include Iggy and the Stooges’ Raw Power, Lou Reed’s Transformer and Queen’s Queen II—the latter later recalled in the opening of the “Bohemian Rhapsody” video. In 1974, director Jim Sharman invited him to photograph the production and cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Lou Reed’s invitation brought Rock to New York, where he eventually settled. From his Madison Avenue studio he developed a new body of work marked by saturated colour, direct flash and an uncommon visual richness. Debbie Harry, the Ramones, Talking Heads, the Dead Boys, Carly Simon and Bette Midler were among the artists who came through the studio.
Over the following decades he photographed successive generations of musicians and figures from film, fashion and cultural life. His subjects ranged from Andy Warhol and Truman Capote to Kate Moss, Lenny Kravitz and Snoop Dogg. Across more than five decades, he photographed over one hundred album covers and published more than twenty books.
Rock later hosted the television series On the Record with Mick Rock and appeared in the Red Bull Films series Visions of Greatness. Barnaby Clay’s documentary SHOT! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2016.
His work was exhibited internationally and entered major public collections. A Blue Plaque at London’s Scala commemorates the July 1972 performances by Lou Reed and Iggy Pop that gave rise to photographs associated with Transformer and Raw Power.
Mick Rock died in New York on 18 November 2021. The Estate continues the preservation, research and presentation of a body of work that helped construct the visual language through which many defining figures in modern music are remembered.
“I was in the right place at the right time with the right people.”Mick Rock
04 Exhibitions & collections
A continuing
cultural presence.
For the last two decades of his life, Mick worked at a restless pace: presenting in leading museums and galleries around the world, taking on advertising campaigns, giving talks and pursuing new projects. This chronology selects only a few exhibitions from that extraordinary activity; it also notes later presentations of the archive.
- 2023
Mick Rock: Unique & Rare Vintage Prints
Photo London, Somerset House · London, United Kingdom — presented with The Music Photo Gallery
11–14 May 2023
- 2019
Queen: The Bohemian Rhapsody Years
Centro Cultural Borges · Buenos Aires, Argentina
4 July–11 August 2019
- 2019
Queen: The Origin of a Legend
Foto Museo Cuatro Caminos · Mexico City, Mexico
15 March–21 April 2019
- 2018
STARMAN: Bowie by Mick Rock
Foto Museo Cuatro Caminos · Mexico City, Mexico
23 March–29 April 2018
- 2017
David Bowie by Mick Rock
La Rural · Buenos Aires, Argentina
2017
- 2015
Mick Rock: Shooting for Stardust — The Rise of David Bowie & Co.
TASCHEN Gallery · Los Angeles, United States
10 September–11 October 2015
- 2014
It’s Rock: Instalação de fotos de Mick Rock
Museu da Imagem e do Som (MIS) · São Paulo, Brazil
28 March–20 April 2014
- 2010–2011
Mick Rock — Rock: Music
Idea Generation Gallery · London, United Kingdom
11 November 2010–16 January 2011
- 2005–2006
Rock ’n’ Roll Icons: The Photography of Mick Rock
Urbis · Manchester, United Kingdom
29 September 2005–8 January 2006
- 2003
Rock ’n’ Roll Eye: The Photography of Mick Rock
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography · Tokyo, Japan
18 July–28 August 2003
Public collections
Mick Rock’s work in institutional collections.
Victoria and Albert Museum
London · The V&A’s David Bowie Archive includes photographs by Mick Rock.
View V&A archive records ↗National Portrait Gallery
London · Holds three works associated with Mick Rock, including a 1974 chromogenic print of Queen acquired in 1999.
View collection records ↗Museum of Modern Art
New York · The collection includes four moving-image works made by David Bowie and Mick Rock.
View MoMA collection ↗Brooklyn Museum
Brooklyn · Mick Rock’s work is listed in the museum’s permanent collection.
Search the collection ↗05 Books & publications
The archive,
in print.
A selected bibliography. Each volume offers a different passage through Rock’s photographs, collaborations and recollections.
01
TASCHEN · 2016
Mick Rock. The Rise of David Bowie. 1972–1973
A landmark monograph of Mick Rock’s photographs from David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust years.
View publication ↗02
Sterling Publishing · 2007
Classic Queen
More than 250 photographs tracing Mick Rock’s relationship with Queen throughout the 1970s.
View publication ↗03
Omnibus Press · 2005
Glam!: An Eyewitness Account
Mick Rock’s first-hand account of the artists, personalities and cultural change of the glam era.
View publication ↗04
Union Square & Co. · 2025
Debbie Harry & Blondie: Picture This
An intimate visual history of Debbie Harry and Blondie, with a foreword by Debbie Harry.
View publication ↗05
Palazzo · 2011
Iggy & the Stooges: Raw Power
A compact edition with an interview and foreword by Iggy Pop.
View publication ↗06
Rebel Arts · 2007
Psychedelic Renegades: With Photographs of Syd Barrett
Photographs from 1969–71, including the session for Syd Barrett’s The Madcap Laughs.
View publication ↗07
Palazzo Editions · 2014
Mick Rock Exposed
A career retrospective told through Rock’s photographs and his own recollections.
View publication ↗08
HarperPop · 2025
Rocky Horror: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Cult Classic
Unseen photographs and interviews marking 50 years of the film and its cultural legacy.
View publication ↗06 Film & moving image
The image
in motion.
Rock’s collaboration with David Bowie also unfolded on film. These early promotional works brought the portrait into movement, gesture and time.
1973
Life on Mars?
Filmed, directed and produced by Mick Rock during the Ziggy Stardust period to accompany the release of the single.
Open on YouTube1972
The Jean Genie
Filmed, directed and produced by Mick Rock in San Francisco and New York during Bowie’s first American tour.
Open on YouTube1972
John, I’m Only Dancing
Filmed, directed and produced by Mick Rock at London’s Rainbow Theatre with David Bowie and the Spiders from Mars.
Open on YouTubeThe archive also holds Space Oddity (1972), filmed, directed and produced by Mick Rock. Four Bowie films are documented in MoMA’s collection. SHOT! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock (2016), directed by Barnaby Clay, chronicles Rock’s life and career.
Primary Estate representation
The Music Photo Gallery
The principal gallery for authorised works from the Mick Rock archive.
The Music Photo Gallery works in direct coordination with the Estate on the presentation, provenance and placement of Mick Rock photographs. For a collector, working with TMPG is the gallery equivalent of working directly with the Estate.
TMPG advises private collectors and institutions, manages availability and supplies the authorised gallery network listed below.
View Mick Rock at The Music Photo Gallery- Authorised editions
- Limited editions printed from original negatives and transparencies held in the archive, produced under Estate supervision.
- Lifetime signed works
- Photographs bearing Mick Rock’s signature, signed during his lifetime.
- Vintage & rare prints
- Historical prints and selected rare or unique works, subject to availability.
- Provenance
- Documentation and print information accompany authorised works. Attribution and authentication remain with the Estate.
08 Contact the Estate
Begin a
conversation.
Research, exhibitions, publications, permissions and institutional collaborations.
info@mickrock.orgLondon / New York