Iconic Album Art of Storm Thorgerson via The Guardian

“I like photography because it is a reality medium, unlike drawing which is unreal. I like to mess with reality…to bend reality. Some of my works beg the question of is it real or not?”

                 –Storm Thorgerson

Graphic designer Storm Thorgerson, who passed way in April, was famous for his surrealist album covers. His clients included Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, Black Sabbath, Dream Theater, The Cranberries, Scorpions, and The Alan Parsons Project, among many others. He grew up with Pink Floyd members Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and David Gilmour and some of his most well known work was for the band, including the iconic image for The Dark Side of the Moon. Please take a look at this fantastic gallery from The Guardian, viewable here. My only criticism is that I wish the gallery was larger.

Thorgerson studied English and Philosophy at the University of Leicester, followed by Film and Television at the Royal College of Art. In 1968 he founded the graphic art group Hipgnosis with Aubrey Powell. They were famous for designing album covers that juxtaposed the traditional with the weird. As the phonograph record became obsolete and tapes and compact discs provided a much less gratifying place for graphic art, Powell and Thorgerson saw an opportunity in the burgeoning music video business and formed Green Back Films in 1983. This was followed by StormStudios in the early 1990s, which is still in business today.