The magic of a project

Now that the design of Holding Bowie is nearing completion, I would like to share something about the adventure and the extraordinary process behind it. The idea for this intimate interlude quite literally came to me on my father’s birthday, 4 October 2025. This year, everything came together: a tribute to my musical hero David Bowie, dedicated to my father, who passed away on 6 January 2025.

All sorts of things have happened behind the scenes, and I now feel I can share some of them. I wanted plenty of variety among the ten contributors, so alongside well-known former band members and friends such as bassist Carmine Rojas and musical director and rhythm guitarist Carlos Alomar, I also decided to approach some lesser-known people from Bowie’s circle. To my relief - and surprise - every single one of them agreed. They are all incredibly busy people, and the question, ‘What has Bowie meant in your life?’ is so far-reaching that, fortunately, I received completely different stories from each of them. I also left the length of their contributions entirely up to them, which resulted in plenty of variety in that respect too.

A particularly important role in the book is reserved for my good friend Carlos Alomar. When my father passed away, the Alomars - Carlos, Robin and Lea - wrote such a moving and heartfelt message on my Facebook page that it became the inspiration for me to put the words ‘Oh, I’ll be free, just like that bluebird’ from Bowie’s Lazarus on my father’s funeral card. In the book, I describe in detail how Carlos would later play a crucial role in the project in other ways too.

The book also features a music box, which Carlos immediately told me he thought was beautiful. He now has one of his own, as an addition to his collection. As if it were not remarkable enough that, without exception, everyone gave me their approval for both their story and the photograph in which they are holding a giclée print of the same portrait, something extraordinary happened with that music box on two separate occasions. I’ll tell you what happened.

On two different occasions, the box, which sits on top of a speaker in my new studio, suddenly began playing by itself. What was most striking was that on both occasions it happened while I was having an intense conversation about my book. The first time was during a WhatsApp exchange with my good friend and graphic designer Mark de Ridder, who has done a truly fantastic job designing my book - but more about that another time. When I told Mark what had just happened, he messaged back: ‘Oh, come on, you’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve just switched on the television, and what comes on? A documentary on BBC Four about Bowie’s fashion.’ It was extraordinary, because you have to turn a handle to make the music play and the little light come on.

How I came up with the idea for the music box in the first place is a story in itself. In the autumn of last year, I came across an advertisement for one of those photo flipbooks. At first, it seemed a little childish. It was advertised as something you could personalise with your own photographs to commemorate a wedding, a holiday or Christmas, for example. I clicked on the advert and, almost by itself, something began to unfold that proved irresistible.

I could upload either eight or sixteen photographs, and immediately thought of my Bowie portraits. I had made exactly eight in which he appears on his own and which were suitable for the format. Once I had uploaded the photographs, I was immediately shown a 3D animation of what the finished object would look like. My heart skipped a beat. How wonderful was this! The next option was to have text engraved on it. Naturally, I entered ‘David Bowie (1947–2016)’. Then came the option to add my favourite music. What could have been more appropriate than the beautiful 2015 version of Sound and Vision? Finally, I could add a little light, and that completed the whole thing. In the end, I had ten made in two different versions - a very limited edition.

But now comes the strange part. For my book, I very much wanted to photograph the music box with its little light illuminated, without using any artificial or digital effects. Technically, that proved almost impossible. And then it happened again. I had just had a conversation with my good friend Chezzie, who did the final editing of the English-language version of my book. Alongside all its magic, the entire project has also been a considerable catharsis for me, because so much of it revolves around my father and Bowie, both of whom have played such an immense role in my life. After speaking to Chezzie, I was feeling rather melancholic. I was thinking a great deal about my father and put on Brian Eno’s beautiful Discreet Music. That music also had a profound influence on Bowie and helped provide fertile ground for the experimental direction he would later pursue.

No fewer than three times, the box began playing a fragment of Sound and Vision entirely by itself, allowing me to capture it on video and take a natural photograph of the object with the little light actually on! The strangest part was that at the beginning I could also hear a gong. That sound is not part of the music and was clearly audible. I immediately thought of Bowie’s visit to the Sakya Muni Buddha Gaya Buddhist temple in Singapore in director Gerry Troyna’s 1983 documentary Ricochet, about the Serious Moonlight Tour. When I got home and searched for the sequence, the sound of the gong at around the 28-minute mark was almost identical to what I had heard in my studio that afternoon.

Later that evening, YouTube’s algorithm led me to a documentary about Bowie’s creativity: Inspirations. In this wonderful documentary, there is a sequence in which Bowie explains his by-then computerised cut-up technique - the so-called Verbasizer - and describes how he used some of the resulting phrases in his songs. In one illustrative sequence, I suddenly heard Bowie singing through my speaker: ‘Dead men don’t talk, dead men don’t talk, but they doooo…’ during the Earthling sessions. The song never actually made it onto the album, incidentally, but that is beside the point.

I attach no particular meaning to any of this, but when I sprang up from behind my easel, I have to admit I had goosebumps. I understand that some people might find masks, music boxes that start playing by themselves and other such ‘signs’ a little unsettling. I found it reassuring instead. In fact, it simply made me smile. At most, it strengthened my feeling that perhaps there really is more between heaven and earth…

For the book, I have included quite a few objects as illustrative material, allowing the same portrait to reappear in all sorts of different forms. Not only in the photographs of the contributors, but also through these remarkable objects. At his core, Bowie of course remained himself, while continually transforming throughout his career. I liked the symbolism of that idea, and in the end it has worked surprisingly well.

And at the risk of being dismissed as a believer in magical thinking: more remarkable things happened during the making of Holding Bowie. But I’ll tell you about those once the book has been published.

I can’t give everything away… But in a different sense.