FEATURE:
Kate Bush: The Iconic Shots
PHOTO CREDIT: Claude Vanheye
‘Walking the Crocodile’, Claude Vanheye (1979)
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THERE are a few great photos…
PHOTO CREDIT: Claude Vanheye
of Kate Bush that were taken in 1979. Barry Schultz took a few of Bush walking around the city. The photo of her in a shop doorway is one that sticks in the mind. Bush was performing The Tour of Life in 1979, and she was in the Netherlands’ capital on 29th April of that year. Nearing the middle of a run of European dates (before she headed back to the U.K.), I wonder how the audience took to her performance. She has a lot of Dutch fans, and it appears that Bush was pretty relaxed and happy in the country. I imagine Amsterdam being a city she was rather comfortable and familiar with. Although I love Schultz’s shots, there is one photograph that sticks in the imagination. Shot by Dutch photographer Claude Vanheye in a parking garage in 1979, the photo of Kate Bush seemingly taking a crocodile for a walk is fantastic! It is playful and elegant at the same time. In a yellow dress looking like she was running or dancing out of the garage, it is humorous and weird. I have never seen a photo quite like it! It is typical of Kate Bush that she would do something different and interesting. A lot of artists might have balked at the concept of walking around with a crocodile (albeit a fake one), though Bush seemed to be in playful and accommodating mood.
His 1979 photo session (some have said it was in 1978, though I am pretty sure it was the following year) with Bush was scheduled for thirty minutes, yet she sent away her entourage and stayed for six hours, with props like a fake dolphin and dresses by Fong Leng. Vanheye’s photos of Bush were used on the Japanese 7" single for Symphony in Blue and in the unofficial box set, Never Forever. At such a busy and tiring time, it is testament to Bush’s friendliness and professionalism that she gave this photographer so much time and herself. I love the shots her took of her in the yellow dress. I have featured his shot of Bush riding a dolphin before. A more surreal sense of imagination, this is something that Bush seemingly clicked with. Almost childlike in its whimsy and wonder, it is a pity more people do not know of his photos. I always feel that his crocodile shot could have been used in Never for Ever as one of the insert photos. There is a rumour that, when Vanheye brought tears from Bush when he proposed the shoot of her with a dolphin, as she had dreamed about a desire to swim with dolphins (something she later alluded to in a 1994 interview). Whilst some dislike the angle of the crocodile shot – as they feel it is cruel (even though it is not real!) -, I think that it is an ingenious idea. No animals were harmed, and Bush obviously was on board (as a vegetarian and animal lover, she was perfectly fine with it).
Not sexualised like many of the photos from 1978 and 1979, instead we get the more eccentric and out-there side to her. Perhaps, being in Amsterdam, something wackier and more trippy was appropriate! I could not imagine a London photographer suggesting she go for a stroll with a crocodile! I still cannot believe she had the time and energy to allow six hours for photographs in one of her most hectic and restless years. Such a giving person, we see Bush so at ease and involved with Vanheye’s visions. The crocodile shot is his finest work, as it seems to bring so many aspects and sides of Bush out. Not that her photographs would get more conventional, though the 1978-1980 sessions are very different to anything that came after. Maybe some are quite juvenile or basic, but I feel the photographs got more serious at a certain point. I like Kate Bush when she is in a cheeky or playful frame. You get something unique from her. Other artists might have worked with someone like Claude Vanheye and phoned it in or not have given much of themselves. In the case of Kate Bush in 1979, she was very much at her peak. As we know when it comes to her and everything she does: she is…
ALWAYS delivers the goods.