One of my earliest defining memories of music was hearing Quadrophenia by The Who when I was 12. That music, and the Mod way of life shaped me as a teenager and it’s an album that still speaks to me now, more than four decades later.
As a photographer I was given the privileged opportunity to enter the world of my heroes. To spend time with them, to share stories, but ultimately to capture their image, frozen in a moment of time.
Whether the image was captured on film, like the photos of The Who at Kentish Town Forum that close this collection, or digitally like the rest of the images, I never forgot the basic principle of photography.
The word Photography literally means ‘drawing with light’, derived from the Greek words “photo”, meaning light and “graph”, meaning to draw.
For me photography has always been as much about light, or the absence thereof, as it is about composition or the decisive moment. So much of my music photography is about the darkness, about shadows and silhouettes, about shape and form.
These are some of the images that I captured over a ten year period during which I was honoured to meet so many of my musical heroes and paint them with light.
Based in Brighton, Sophie Cook has a passion for street, sports and music photography. She has photographed top bands like Oasis, Kasabian and The Stereophonics as well as the legendary Dolly Parton.
She’s worked closely with Peter Doherty, Babyshambles and The Libertines for over a decade and her images have been used on everything from record covers to mugs, T shirts and tour posters.