Blur’s Dave Rowntree is set to release his debut photography book ‘No One You Know: Dave Rowntree’s Early Blur Photos’ on 9th September via Hero, part of the Legend Times Group.
The 200+ page hardback book, edited by Miranda Sawyer, documents the earliest years of Blur through Rowntree’s personal photographs taken on his Olympus OM-10 camera. The collection provides an intimate look at the band’s formative period, capturing moments between their professional commitments.
“The pictures I took are of a band right at the start of their career. They’re of what we did between the gigs, interviews and photo sessions. They are of us hanging out, relaxing, travelling, eating, and especially in the early days, drinking. They are snapshots of what life in Blur was really like in the first few years when the TV cameras and tape recorders were turned off,” Rowntree explains. “Obviously there isn’t much of the band actually working, because then I would have been working too. This is everything else.”
Rowntree joined the band in the late 1980s alongside Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon in Colchester, with Alex James later completing the line-up. The group have since released nine studio albums and won five BRIT Awards.
Beyond his work with Blur, Rowntree has pursued various endeavours, including running computer animation company Nanomation, working as a solicitor, serving as a Labour county councillor, contributing to the Beagle 2 Mars mission, and composing soundtracks for productions including BBC’s ‘The Capture’ and Netflix’s ‘The One’. His solo album ‘Radio Songs’ was released in 2023.
Rowntree will be signing copies of the book at Rough Trade Denmark St on 10th September.
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