‘It frustratesme that bands always play it so safe with imagery on their CDs.’

These days SPG almost walks on water in the rarefied atmosphere of the rock ‘Galacticos’. In a special BBC Inside Out documentary in 2007 Rick Wakeman interviewed SarahPhotogirl and reiterated the need for any decent rock band photographer to show the band who’s boss.

He said: “When I was a prog. rock hell-raiser I had no time for any photographer who would say to the

band....’Hmm let’s just try a shot in this corner and see what happens.’ I

used to walk out. But if the snapper was assertive and confident and said;

’Right move over to that corner for

this shot’. I knew he or she had sussed out the location and knew

06 www.bowens.co.uk

what they were talking about. And that’s exactly what SarahPhotogirl does.” He added “Plus, the secret of a good photographer is to have an ‘in’ that nobody else has – and SPG works very hard to achieve that too.”

Sarah Robinson morphed into ‘SarahPhotogirl’ almost by osmosis. She recalls: “I used to phone record companies all the time asking for photo-passes to various gigs. I’d say

‘Hi this is Sarah the photographer’

and over time it just got knocked back to SarahPhotogirl.”

She tells Litebook: “I became obsessed by the idea of shooting musicians frommy teen years. I grew

up surrounded by torn-out posters of my favourite bands from Smash Hits magazine. But when I really studied the pictures I realised that I could do a better job just by changing the composition or perhaps the capture angle. I could just instinctively see that if Damon Albarn was located more to the right it would have been a real improvement. That sort of thing.”

For years Sarah shot bands just to hear them play - and because she could get a backstage pass. “I must have come across as a bit of a groupie to tourmanagers,whowere obviously willing to pay for my images,” she laughs. “Of course, eventually you have to startmaking a living, but at the start of my career Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36