This year’s Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Jill Furmanovsky, whose amazing career in music photography spans 50 years. She looks back on it with Geoff Harris
Imagine you are 19 in 1974, still a relative newcomer to gig photography, and you get asked to cover a major tour by a much talked-about British band. Scary, right, particularly as there were no digital cameras back then, or even autofocus. Oh, and that band is Pink Floyd, and they’re touring to promote Dark Side of the Moon, the album that propelled them into the stratosphere. So, no pressure then…
A lot of young photographers would have freaked out, fluffed it, or both, but not Jill Furmanovsky – she took the job in her stride, earned the respect of Pink Floyd, and went on to become one of the best-known photographers in the business.
Unassuming, friendly and totally devoid of ego, it’s not hard to see how Jill would get on with just about anybody, but being nice is not enough to stay afloat in the shark-infested waters of show business, then or now. Jill’s lasted the course by being a very creative photographer and somebody who, as the Pink Floyd story shows, can master essential new skills quickly. She is a very worthy winner of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
In the blood
‘My dad was an architect in our native Zimbabwe, and photography was his hobby, along with playing the guitar,’ Jill recalls. ‘So my career has kind of combined his two hobbies. The darkroom still fascinates me after all these years.’
Jill’s first encounter with a rock star came in 1967, when she and a friend hung around outside Paul McCartney’s north London house until the great man made an appearance. Beatlemania snaps aside, Jill’s formal training in photography began in 1972 while studying textiles at the Central School of Art and Design in London.
Part of the course involved a week-long photography taster, and being a young rock fan, Jill started taking the college camera to gigs at the Rainbow Theatre, then one of London’s most prestigious venues. ‘I think it was a Pentax K1000 or something and I’d learned the basics of exposure and how to develop black & white film. During a gig by the prog rock band Yes, I noticed photographers were allowed down the front and thought I’d go down to get a better view. Nobody stopped me – they must have thought I was a professional photographer as l had a professional camera. I got chatting to some other photographers at the show, one thing led to another, and I was offered the job of in-house photographer at the Rainbow. It was an unpaid job, but a prestigious one, and a great opportunity.’
Sink or swim
Jill had found
