Mick Rock, the rock star photographer, dies

British photographer Mick Rock, known for having immortalized countless music legends in iconic images, from David Bowie to the Sex Pistols, died at age 72, his family reported Friday.

“With great regret we announce that our dear psychedelic renegade Mick Rock has made the Jungian journey to the other side,” they wrote on his Twitter account, referring to psychoanalyst Carl Jung.

“Those who had the pleasure of living in its orbit know that Mick was much more than ‘the man who photographed the 1970s'”, as he was popularly known. “He was a poet of photography, a true force of nature who spent his days doing exactly what he loved, always in his deliciously outrageous way,” they added.

The family did not specify the circumstances of the death of the photographer, born in London in 1948 and graduated in Medieval and Modern Languages ​​from the University of Cambridge.

An iconic photographer on the rock scene, he was the author of famous portraits of Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, the Sex Pistols, and Blondie, and became known in the early 1970s for his early portraits of Bowie.

For almost two years, he was the official photographer for the British singer-songwriter, for whom he made album covers, posters and the videos for “Live on Mars” and “Space Oddity.”

Rock also followed the life of the flamboyant and decadent Ziggy Stardust, Bowie’s alter ego between 1972 and 1973, who crossed paths with Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Roxy Music, and Marianne Faithfull.