Legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix is sitting during a session at Gered Mankowitz’s studio in London in 1967. The photographer recalled, “I had the privilege to work with Jimi twice in 1967... We got on incredibly well and I found him to be a most charming, humble and witty person as well as a willing and enthusiastic subject.”
Mankowitz photographed Jimi Hendrix twice in 1967–in February and March–in his Mason’s Yard studio in central London. On the first shoot, on the very last frame of the first roll, he took the portrait that would become the most important photograph of his entire career and possibly the most famous studio portrait of Jimi ever taken.
“When he arrived in the studio, it wasn’t dressing up. That was how he looked. He arrived with the military jacket on, a cloak, a funny little canvas hold-all bag, and a couple of shirts. They weren’t ironed or folded; they were just thrown into a bag. It wasn’t like a stage uniform. It was what he wore. They were day-to-day clothes; he looked like that all the time. And that was great. He looked the part.” – Gered Mankowitz
It’s a portrait of a tightly framed Hendrix with hands on hips, taken from a slightly elevated position to emphasize Hendrix’s head, the width of his shoulders and his slim hips. Here’s Mankowitz: “It is extraordinary to look back and realize that this portrait was the only shot I did of Jimi by himself on this first roll. I must have either felt very confident that I got it, or was so stupid that I didn’t realize what had just happened. Either way, it was captured, and would go on to have a life of its own many years later.”
“After completing the first roll, I decided the white background wasn’t the most appropriate,” Mankowitz continued. “For the second roll, I moved over to the ‘thunder grey’ background, which I felt imparted a more serious and moody atmosphere. It was against this background that I continued photographing Jimi by himself, including the ‘Smoking’ series of portraits. These have become almost as famous as ‘Classic.’”
“Jimi had a great smile, and we all laughed a lot throughout the session,” Mankowitz added. “Although nobody was that interested in seeing him grin back in ’67, his smile is lovely to look at now and the photographs of him seeming so happy help paint a picture of what he was really like at that moment in time.”
(Photos © by Gered Mankowitz)
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