This is an exceptionally rare poster - either as promotional poster made for record stores to promote Pink Floyd’s first album, or a poster printed to sell to teenagers back at the time the album was released.
The cover of the album was an iconic vision of psychedelia. It presents an altered perception of a visual image, in this case the band, as if you’re looking at them through a kaleidoscope. Each member appears three or four times, blurring into themselves and each other. The effect is disorienting, and striking, perfectly reflecting the musical contents within.
The photo was taken by British fashion designer Vic Singh in early 1967 – back when British fashion and the music world were in close contact – the final days of “Swinging London” before the center of the hip universe moved out to San Francisco. Singh got a phone call from the band’s management in the early summer of 1967 asking if he’d be interested in photographing the group at his studio and it came out of the blue.
“I’d met the band at an event in Piccadilly a few weeks earlier – we used to call them happenings back then,” recalls Singh. “So I knew about them but I’d never seen them play. I asked whether they had anything particular in mind for the session but they said no, they’d leave it up to me.”
Singh’s pal George Harrison, had given him a prism that would produce kaleidoscopic effects but it was a very delicate process to match the prism with the camera. For the record, there were no filters or other effects, apart from the prism. “It was straight through the Hasselblad on to Ektochrome, “ states Singh. And no stylists or make-up artists in attendance either. “Certainly not. Even the models did their own makeup back then.”
Looking closely one sees that this photo was not the same as the one used from the album but it was certainly from the same session – about 40-50 photos were produced. In this shot it is no surprise that Syd Barrett was given a more prominent exposure.
There was a slight horizontal fold in the middle and because the poster was printed on thin paper (leading most of them to eventually ruin by now), we had this one backed with archival linen. If you look closely at what appears to be a black and white poster, you will notice a very slight pink tint to the photo.