Diego Gil
Opening an event devoted to the dialogue between photography and music with a film screening may seem bold. Yet on closer inspection, choosing Brett Morgen's Moonage Daydream to open the Sound and Vision exhibition weekend seems obvious. This film about David Bowie acts as an ideal bridge. Let's not forget that the exhibition's very title, Sound and Vision, is borrowed from the song of the same name on the album Low.
A brief summary of the film is in order. Through an impressive assembly of archive material (interviews, concert footage, rare documents and, of course, photographs), the viewer discovers the artistic career of David Bowie. Brett Morgen first takes us into a distant galaxy; a mysterious star comes into view as Bowie's music builds. Images from one of Bowie's last music videos reveal the corpse of an astronaut. It is Major Tom. The artist's first avatar.
The director begins his story with the alien Ziggy Stardust, another iconic and curious character played by Bowie. The film's approach is clear. We see in particular the choice, sometimes disconcerting, to take on different characters to face his career and explore his own identity. These successive transformations seem to illustrate perfectly Oscar Wilde's famous line: « Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. »
However, this is not a classic biographical documentary. Brett Morgen doesn't try to tell David Bowie's life chronologically. We move forward, then go back. Sometimes distant periods intertwine to create an experience that is more sensory than chronological. The film, abundant and psychedelic, is built like a completely wild journey. The documentary admits from the outset that the road will be winding, so much so that some viewers will get lost in the avalanche of facts, thoughts, moments and asides about this star.
The image no longer just shows the artist; it helps build the legend. The film's themes echo several of the questions Sound and Vision sets out to explore, whatever the speakers or moments of the weekend. Among them is the question of the artist as icon, which I will address in my talk on Saturday. Because becoming an icon happens above all through images. Since the 1960s, music has had a close dialogue with the visual arts. In the 1970s this relationship reached a kind of maturity. An artist could no longer neglect their appearance or the way they presented themselves to the public. Becoming an icon also raises the question of the artist's place in our society. Whatever the movement or era, the musician holds a unique social position, revealing their time as much as our own nature.
David Bowie was fully aware of this. Better still, he made his image an essential part of his work. The photographs that mark his career bear witness to this. Some even go beyond their aesthetic function to become cultural symbols. The cover of the album Aladdin Sane is probably the most famous example: that face crossed by a lightning bolt doesn't just illustrate a record, it helps create a myth.
Credit: Photo: AVRO, CC BY-SA 3.0 NL, via Wikimedia Commons
The images roll by and gradually reveal the periods Bowie lived through. The 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, at the heart of this talk and exhibition, appear in all their complexity. Through his travels, encounters and questions, Bowie also becomes the witness of a changing world. Western society was going through profound change. The post-war period and the economic growth of the 1950s saw the rise of a youth culture driven by rock'n'roll and figures like Elvis Presley. The 1960s sped this up with the space race, the civil rights struggle, social protest and the sexual revolution. Music then became one of the main forms of expression of a generation seeking change. In the 1970s, identities multiplied, aesthetics diversified and images took up more and more space in popular culture. After the peaceful hopes of the Summer of Love, the 1970s saw crises, uncertainty and the questioning of established values. The film readily calls on ideas close to Nietzsche's: old values fade away, leaving people adrift. The characters Bowie embodied reflect this constant search. They sometimes appear as attempts to fill a void, sometimes as artistic answers to an era marked by doubt.
The film then continues its exploration through Bowie's whole career. We leave the chronological frame of the exhibition to follow the artist through his successive transformations. But how could we resist the pleasure of getting as close as possible to his inner world, right up to his final creations? The journey ends with Blackstar, a fascinating farewell work created at death's door, in which Bowie turns his own departure into an artistic gesture one last time.
The film thus recalls an idea central to Bowie, and to the Argia collective too: the artist is an explorer. He crosses disciplines, blurs the boundaries between the arts and invites the public to see the world differently. In this sense, Moonage Daydream is less a film about Bowie than a reflection on creation, imagination and the freedom to reinvent yourself. The documentary invites us into a constant search. We could apply this idea to our exhibition of iconic album covers spanning the mid-1950s to the late 1970s. Each cover is a story that takes us beyond the photographic frame. A new reinvention or a risk taken. By opening this weekend with Moonage Daydream, the bet is ultimately to remind us that music isn't only listened to. It is also looked at. And that some images, when they meet a piece of music, can cross the decades, nourish our collective imagination and turn an artist into a true cultural icon.
David Bowie's artistic career, told by Brett Morgen (2022) through archive material (concerts, interviews, rare documents and photographs) in a sensory, psychedelic form, far from the classic biographical documentary.
At Les Variétés cinema in Hendaye, on Friday 31 July 2026 at 9pm (introduction from 8.30pm), opening the Crossed Perspectives #1, Sound and Vision weekend. The screening is followed by a discussion with Diego Gil, author of Les 12 vies de Bowie.
No: the film is a visual and musical experience. But photography lovers will find a special thread running through it: how an icon is made through images.
The screening of Moonage Daydream opens Crossed Perspectives #1, Sound and Vision: three days of exhibitions, talks and music at the Gaztelu Market Hall (31 July - 2 August, free entry), including my talk on photography and album covers on Saturday at 5pm.
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