Kate Bush gets dressed up as an astronaut. Then she bounces crazily on a trampoline, like a naughty little girl, before cracking up laughing. Later she takes a snooze backstage, her hair in curlers. Her dance teacher is just about to awaken her with a start.Some of these astonishing images are this month being published for the first time after as many as 35 years lying unseen. They are taken by rock photographer Guido Harari, whose new book, “The Kate Inside,” comes before a London exhibition of some of the 300 pictures – many of them unexpected, with Polaroids, contact sheets, personal notes from Kate and outtakes.Harari for the first time also gives insights into Bush’s working methods in an interview with Blouin ARTINFO.Harari worked with the UK singer-songwriter for a decade, from 1982 to 1993, shooting record covers and more, much as he has for Peter Gabriel, Frank Zappa, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, David Crosby, Leonard Cohen, and Bob Marley.He does say though that the Kate pictures were special –she was busy producing her boldest albums: “The Dreaming,” “Hounds of Love,” “The Sensual World,” and “The Red Shoes”, along with her film “The Line, The Cross & The Curve.”Guido and Kate met when she was working with their mutual friend, dancer Lindsay Kemp, on September 25 1982. Guido had started documenting the Kemp company a few years before:“Kate had agreed to an impromptu shoot at Hotel Plaza. She started a wild performance on a tiny set and I was amazed. Not many artists let themselves go like that. The following day we met in Milan and she was very happy with the results. With the Lindsay Kemp connection I thought that something else would probably come up in time, perhaps she would have another album and we would do a brief session for magazines in Italy and that will be it. But how could I know that this would be the start of a long collaboration?“Kate wanted some authenticity in the pictures: she didn’t want to be shown as a diva or an icon. She had already done that with Gered Mankowitz on her first two albums. She was developing ideas with her brother John Carder Bush, so there was an open space here where we could improvise have fun. So it was very unusual. As you know, she is quite famous for being a control freak, especially for music and her recordings, but with me it was exactly the opposite. There was openness and curiosity; she created a complicity which was quite unprecedented.”“I like the photo of Kate in her kimono, shot for ‘The Sensual World.’ I played with multiple exposures. While she didn’t care much about fashion, she liked the materials, quality, texture, and colours. Whenever I saw a texture, even on the clothes or the backdrops I would try with multiple exposures to add something: on this image the swirling shapes you see are details from the outfit.“When I went back to the archives, at least 20 or 30 years had passed and there are some that I thought could be improved or they could be transformed into completely new images. Not many, but there was some where I could create new pictures or new illusions and that was one because the basic headshot is the same as where she is wearing a red kimono. I picked up a close-up of this image for the slipcase of ‘The Kate Inside’ Deluxe Edition but you only see the eyes, nose and the mouth, just like one of those (Erwin) Blumenfeld pictures from ‘Vogue’ in the 1940s. I knew that when she came on stage in London she had a wing like a raven woven on one of her arms so I got hold of actual raven wings and photographed them, then started working in Photoshop, as I would have done in the old days in my darkroom. This image somehow fits the title ‘The Kate Inside’ (a play on Bush’s album ‘The Kick Inside.’)“The trampoline shot came when Kate was rehearsing for ‘Rubberband Girl,’ one of the songs from ‘The Red Shoes.’ She had a lot of fun doing that and looks like a little girl in an amusement park.“Lindsay’s favourite picture from the book was also taken in 1993 on the set of ‘The Line, the Cross & The Curve,’ Kate’s film inspired by ‘The Red Shoes.’ She called me up and it was a perfect occasion to do something with Lindsay. What she had asked me to do shoot a fly-on-the-wall reportage, to capture every bit of action or non-action besides from the actual filming and I went for it. It was fantastic and again she didn’t limit me or censor me - she allowed me to shoot everything and to be as close as I wish to be or with a wide angle. I spent a whole week there on the set. The shot was when I was in the dressing room: Lindsay was ready to go but Kate was still with no makeup, just curlers in her hair and taking a nap. Lindsay immediately picked up on this. He understood that I want to come up with something crazy and he played the madman and it was really funny.” (In a separate interview, Lindsay said he was about to jump in the air at the welcome news that the bar was open.) “Kate treated people as equals. You never felt like a pro who was hired to do a job. We were like friends but she concentrated all the time on her work. She told me that all her socialising would revolve around the people that she worked with - her priority was art. That was her mission. In the studio shoots that we had she would go on for 12 or 15 hours non-stop, so there was no rush.“At what was to be the last shoot we did, I asked Kate if we would do more and she didn’t say anything; I didn’t know that she gone through changes in her personal life: her mother had died and she was separating from her then partner and she was very much under pressure with the film because she wanted to complete it in time for the London Film Festival, then she wasn’t pleased with the results, and then she wanted to become a mother. I thought anyway she needed a good break. Kate sent me various notes after the shoot with one saying that she really needed some rest. Then she disappeared for 12 years. In 2005, she finally released another album, “Aerial,” followed in 2011 by “50 Words For Snow” and her first concerts in 35 years. I was a bit sad because I thought we had come up with some incredible material, really unique, and thought it was shelved forever - well actually it was until now, this month.”“The Kate Inside” will be at Art Bermonsdey Project Space, 183-185 Bermondsey St, London SE1 3UW from September 13 through 30, 2016. The book is available in regular and deluxe editions with a slipcase as well as posters and litho prints also from Guido’s www//wallofsoundgallery.com .
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