Michael Cooper (photographer)

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Michael Cooper (1941-1973) was a British photographer who is best known for his photographs of leading rock musicians of the 1960s and early 1970s, most notably the many photos he took of The Rolling Stones in the mid-1960s.

His most famous work is the cover photography for the 1967 LP Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles. The 'Welcome the Rolling Stones, Good Guys' sweatshirt worn by the 'little girl' figure on the far right of the photo (actually a cloth figure of Shirley Temple) was provided by Cooper's young son Adam.^[1]. Cooper also took the cover photograph for the Rolling Stones 1967 LP Their Satanic Majesties Request.

In 1964 Cooper met London art dealer Robert Fraser , through whom he was introduced to leading figures in music, art and literature, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones (the rock band he worked most closely with), Marianne Faithfull, Eric Clapton, artists Francis Bacon, Andy Warhol, Peter Blake and David Hockney and writers William Burroughs, Jean Genet, Terry Southern and Allen Ginsberg.^[2]

Cooper was one of those present at Keith Richards' house, "Redlands", in Sussex, when a party being held there was famously raided by police in the late afternoon of 12 February, 1967, resulting in drugs charges being laid against Richards, Mick Jagger and Robert Fraser.^[3]

Cooper loaned Terry Southern a copy of Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange in 1967 and they collaborated on the first film adaptation of the novel, which Cooper intended to direct, with Mick Jagger as Alex and the other members of The Rolling Stones as Alex's gang of droogs. The project was eventually shelved after the screenplay was returned (unread) by Britain's Lord Chamberlain, with a note indicating that he would not allow the film to be made because it dealt with "youthful incitement". Southern later recommended the book to his friend Stanley Kubrick after Kubrick's planned film on Napoleon was rejected by MGM.^[4]

Cooper died in 1973 from a heroin overdose.

A lavish book of Cooper's photography, Blinds and Shutters, edited by Perry Richarson, was published in a limited edition in 1989. A retrospective exhibition of his photography with the same title was held at the Atlas Gallery, London in September-October 2003.

Cooper's photographs also feature in the book Michael Cooper: You Are Here - The London Sixties, edited by Robin Muir (Schirmer/Mosel, 1999) and in the book The Early Stones, also edited by Perry Richardson.

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