"Richard Wright, fabled keyboard player from popular rock and roll ensemble Pink Floyd, made a solo album in 1996. Apart from the hallmarks of his lyricism and keyboard swashes, the theme of the album concerned, narratively speaking, the emotional breakdown of someone, occasioned by some unstated trauma followed by subsequent attempts at recovery. In essence there was a time before and a time after the breakdown - the former characterised by a wholeness and the latter by a broken quality.
We imagined a human figure that was half natural and half fractured, yet being one and the same person. For Rick’s record we saw a woman divided by a disc of water, being whole and natural as she dived in, legs of flesh and bone, but fractured as she came though the other side, the upper body now made of broken china.
It seemed an elegant and lyrical way of suggesting a breakdown, in sympathy with the music, and appropriate that the fractured half was literally made of pieces of broken china like a cracked jug (the back cover was the reverse, broken china legs and flesh or mended upper body to indicate the recovery). Also appropriate that the trauma was represented by a disc of water, not something heavy and dark, but more lyrical and liquid like the music." -- Storm Thorgerson
Image Courtesy of Rick Wright. Photography by StormStudios.
Exhibition History:
Lambda Print
Mind Over Matter - The Images of Pink Floyd: 40 Years of Collaboration with Storm Thorgerson of Hipgnosis and StormStudios, June - July, 2008, San Francisco Art Exchange, San Francisco, CA.
Release Notes:
Lambda Print
In 2008, Storm Thorgerson and SFAE celebrated Pink Floyd's 40th anniversary with an exhibition of signed Lambda digital C-Type photographic prints of album cover related images that he had created for the band over the previous 40 years.
These included works he produced both as a founding member of the design collective Hipgnosis, and as an independent designer with StormStudios.
The Lambda printing process involves using lasers to expose a photo-sensitive paper which is then wet-processed, similar to a tradtional dark room photographic print.
Storm's Lambda prints were produced as signed, open editions and were only briefly available for sale as they were intended only for the anniversary celebration. Relatively few of any single image were produced.
Archival Pigment Print - The 20/20 Series
Storm created a series he called "20/20" that was comprised of 20 of his favorite images. Each piece was published as a limited edition of only 20 pieces (plus 2 Artist Proofs).
Most certainly a play on the phrase "20/20" referring to perfect vision, the set was designed to showcase some of the pieces he valued most, including many of his more obscure album cover images.
Collector's Notes:
Lambda Print
Each color photograph was printed to order in the UK and then hand-signed by Storm Thorgerson. When he passed away, he did not leave an archive of these prints behind, only the handful that he had pre-printed and signed for exhibition remained available in our inventory.
Occasionally we may also have one available for resale from a private collector.
The individual print details are below, please contact us for the latest availability.
20" x 24" Sheet Size
Signed, Open Edition
Lambda Digital C-Type Print - SOLD OUT
Archival Pigment Print
The entire edition was printed and signed at the time by Storm Thorgerson. Availability is extremely limited, please contact us for details.
23.5" x 30.5" Paper Size
Signed, Limited Edition (20 + 2 APs)
Archival Pigment Print on Paper - SOLD OUT