Bleu Melody ─ Tony Frank

An archival volume shedding new light on one of the most iconic record cover images in French popular culture.

Bleu Melody is a publication by French photographer Tony Frank. It brings together rare archival material related to Serge Gainsbourg’s 1971 album Histoire de Melody Nelson, whose cover featured Jane Birkin, then Gainsbourg’s wife. Through contact sheets, slides, proofs and Frank’s own recollections of the shoot, the book revisits a world-famous image from multiple angles and offers a renewed understanding of its making.

More than a simple archival supplement, the publication reveals the photographic process behind an image that has become inseparable from the mythology surrounding Gainsbourg and Birkin. It stands as both a document of a particular moment in French visual culture and a compact but rich study of image-making itself.

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Title: Bleu Melody
Artist: Tony Frank
Publisher: RVB Books, 2019
Format: Softcover with dust jacket
Size: 155 × 200 mm
Pages: 96
Language: English
Edition: Second printing
ISBN: 979-1090306783