On May 4th 1963 photographer Philip Townsend took the first official photographs of the Rolling Stones. His brief was to make them the opposite of the Beatles. He told them to wear their normal clothes and walked them around the streets of Chelsea to Cheyne Walk, to a disused wharf on the Thames and finally (and fittingly) to a pub, The Australian. A billion images later the Stones are still with us and Townsend went on to photograph everyone who was anyone throughout the sixties.
I recently bought an archive of his images and I’m featuring them here because… well, because they’re so cool, for one thing, but also because they prove that I buy pretty much anything on paper, not just old books. In fact I’m after all sorts of stock now as this is the busiest time of the year for me: seven fairs in two months!
Please get in touch, whether you are a celebrity photographer or not. I’m buying books, magazines, photo albums, manuscripts, diaries, postcards, ephemera, posters and more.
There are several accounts of the photo shoot on line and you can read more about this archive here.
Philip Townsend, 1963. First edition. A photography archive of 45 images.
