Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here - Diver, Album Inner Sleeve, 1975

This photograph was featured on the inside sleeve of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here album cover. The overarching concept of this album cover's design was to capture the sense of absence, loss, and empty gestures that were reflected in much of the music on the record.

From the iconic front cover image of the two businessmen shaking hands while one is literally being burned in the deal, to the Magritte-inspired faceless record salesmen in the desert, and this impossibly still diver plunging into the iconic Mono Lake, each artwork used in this design is an exceptional example of Hipgnosis's highly refined image-making skills.

In their classic approach, Hipgnosis did everything they could "for real" In order to achieve the surreal effects in their imagery. In this case they had a diver hold his pose underwater for over two minutes to allow the ripples to dissipate on the lake's surface. 

Located in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, Mono Lake is an ancient saline lake lined with limestone formations - called tufa towers - that give it this iconic appearance.

Lambda Release Notes:
In 2008, Storm and SFAE celebrated Pink Floyd's 40th anniversary with an exhibition of signed photographs of images that he had created for the band over the years both as a founding member of the design collective Hipgnosis, and as an independent designer with StormStudios. These photographs were produced as signed, open editions and were only briefly available for sale as they were intended only for the anniversary celebration. Very few of any of these images were produced. 

Image Courtesy of Pink Floyd. Photography by Hipgnosis.