Creating The NME Years

Welsh-born Chalkie Davies joined the Rock and Roll Circus in 1973 after photographing David Bowie's last night as Ziggy Stardust at the Hammersmith Odeon. He worked as a staff photographer at the NME from 1975-79, shooting numerous iconic covers including The Clash, The Ramones and The Sex Pistols. In 1980, he helped launch The Face magazine. From 1977-85, he also shot record covers for Thin Lizzy, Elvis Costello, The Specials, The Pretenders, Pete Townshend and David Bowie.

He also made a series of formal portraits of many of the best musicians from this time. By the mid-1980s, Chalkie felt the need to change his focus and headed to the United States of America to pursue a new career as a still life photographer.

Before leaving the UK, Chalkie put all of his work for both NME and The Face into a vault, deciding to leave them unseen for thirty years, wondering what cultural relevance they may have when he finally decided to reassess his work.

Earlier this year, these unseen portraits and a large selection of his best work for the NME made up a stunning Retrospective at the National Museum Cardiff. (9th May–6th September 2015).  Many people traveled to see this Retrospective in Cardiff and Oriel Colwyn, in conjunction with Chalkie, to bring some of his work to an audience in the north.

Chalkie tried to replicate as closely as possible the original show, including the huge iconic images, and some of the specially prepared multimedia material. The show also included ten photographs that he was unable to fit into the National Museum, and some photographs taken behind the scenes during the preparation of the original exhibition.