H.R. Giger: Debbie Harry Metamorphosis: Creating the Visual Concept for KooKoo

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Harry was looking for an artist for her first solo album and Giger signed up instantly, infatuated with the beautiful musician. In contrast, some of the most striking are the colourful, outdoor photos of Debbie nonchalantly hanging out in the neighbourhood while looking a bit like the robot woman in Metropolis.

That comes across clearly in Debbie Harry’s memoir Face It, as does her admiration for Chris Stein’s parallel career as a photographer. It continues with photos of the studio, work-in-progress Polaroids by Giger and his crew, and Giger’s drawings. The book begins with pictures from the trio’s first meeting in New York – the Alien exhibition and socialising afterwards. It’s all there on film: Warhol, Debbie Harry, the cast, the city – and its his documentary of the Big Apple throughout the 70s and 80s that remains just as looming a character in his photographic archive.Interestingly, just as she would work with David Cronenberg in 1983, Harry would also collaborate with another artist with his own ties to the world of horror.

More recently, in October of 2019, Debbie became a best selling author with the release of her memoir, FACE IT. Beyond his era-defining music with Blondie, Stein has collaborated with a host of artists over the years, including Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, William Burroughs, Devo, Glenn O’Brien, and Shepard Fairey. In an arresting mix of visceral storytelling and stunning visuals including never-before-seen photographs, bespoke illustrations and fan art installations, FACE IT upended the standard musical memoir while delivering a truly intimate portrait of an iconoclast. R. Giger, best known for his biomechanical creature and set design for seminal 1979 sci-fi-horror film Alien, encountered Debbie Harry, the punk icon and lead singer of globally successful new wave band Blondie, the results were sublime. He helped design the haunting imagery for Swiss psyche rockers Walpurgis’ 1969 album, The Shiver , Emerson Lake, and Palmer’s gold-selling 1973 LP, Brain Salad Surgery , and the sleeve for French prog-rockers Magma’s 1978 record Attahk .Debbie Harry picked up on the personal interpretation theme when asked to describe the album, explaining, “the words simply mean what they say. Recently,” he added, “I’ve been trying acupuncture, hence the needles as well as the ‘punk’ with the word acupuncture. With all the grit, grime and glory recounted in intimate detail, FACE IT recreated the downtown scene of 1970s New York City, where Blondie played alongside The Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, Iggy Pop and David Bowie. Captivated by how photography can bottle up a memory forever, his work aimed to keep things as candid as possible, from his still-bandmate and former-partner Debbie Harry to strangers on the street, the result is raw images, people at their most honest.