Derek Ridgers, is an established and well known English photographer with a career spanning over thirty years. Most famous for his work among the milieu of music, film and club/street culture – photographing everyone from James Brown to The Spice Girls, from Clint Eastwood to Johnny Depp.  Derek recently published 2 articles on his own blog with memories of working with Dave and Annie.   – as well as photographing politicians, gangsters, artists, writers, fashion designersand sportsmen. He has also compiled an almost unrivalled image archive during three decades of visually chronicling famous and sometimes influential British social scenes such as skinhead, fetish, club, punk and the New Romantics.

Photo’s kindly reproduced with permission from Derek Ridgers. Click here to see more pictures from Derek’s archives.

Annie Lennox Dave Stewart Eurythmics Derek Ridgers 01 Annie Lennox Dave Stewart Eurythmics Derek Ridgers 02

The first photo was taken in Camden in 1982, and the second in Israel in 1987.

Derek writes :

Source : Eurythmics, Camden Town 1982

I photographed Eurythmics quite a few times in the first seven years of their existence.

In the early ’80s, whilst I still had a day job at an ad agency, I got a monthly commission from Cosmopolitan magazine to search out and photograph some upwardly mobile new bands.

I can’t remember the exact circumstances but somehow I’d met Cynthia Rose, a writer at NME, and she had her ear much closer to the musical ground than I had.  She tipped me off about Eurythmics.  I hadn’t been too impressed by the Tourists but eventually I went to check out Eurythmics at an enthusiastic but sparsely attended gig at the Fridge in Brixton.  I was immediately won over.  I got their phone number from Cynthia, gave them ring and photographed them hanging around in a yard outside the studio they were working in, in Camden Town.

This photograph, or one very like it, duly appeared in Cosmo.

 

Source : Annie Lennox, Jerusalem 1987

Eurythmics were intending to shoot scenes for a pop video in and around Jerusalem.  I was flown out to shoot some photos of Annie Lennox during down-time, for a solo side project.  This is an out-take from that shoot.

I went down one day to watch them filming in an area that I believe was called King Solomon’s Baths in nearby Bethlehem. Dave Stewart was there with Siobhan Fahey (of Bananrama) who was his girlfriend at the time. She had some part in the video, which required her to not wear very much – a sort of belly dancer’s skirt and top.  As we all know, in that part of the world – the birthplace of Jesus Christ – women normally cover up completely and Siobhan had attracted a huge crowd of young Arab youths who stared at her with a rather scary mixture of lust and hate. All this unpleasant attention really seemed to freak Siobhan out and, not unnaturally, she didn’t seem to want to do any filming. It seemed more than a little inappropriate and I think the idea was canned. Either that or they went somewhere less crowded.

This photograph (detail), which was taken on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, was the last time I ever photographed Annie.

In the five years between this photograph and the previous one, Annie Lennox had gone from a virtual unknown to a huge world star.  I enjoyed every moment of the time I spent photographing her.  She was always warm, friendly and very unaffected by her success.