Photographer Gered Mankowitz Recalls Suggesting a New Look for Kate Bush and How It Transformed Her Image (Exclusive)

Mankowitz saw the core of Bush’s performance persona and brought it to the forefront visually

NEED TO KNOW

• Gered Mankowitz began his career as a photographer in the 1960s, going on to work with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Eurythmics and more
• Mankowitz tells PEOPLE about working with Kate Bush in the early days of her career and what he saw in her as she prepared to unleash her debut single, “Wuthering Heights”
• He recalls the artist as being a “wonderful” but “quite exhausting” force of nature on the precipice of her career truly taking off

A photographer’s vision for Kate Bush helped solidify her style as she made her musical debut.

Gered Mankowitz was well into his career in music photography when he was brought into the “Running Up That Hill” star’s world in the late ‘70s as she prepared to unleash her debut single, “Wuthering Heights.” Nearly five decades after their first collaboration, Bush is among the many subjects in Gered Mankowitz: Photographs, a retrospective covering 65 years of the photographer’s work from 1960 to 2025.

Speaking to PEOPLE about the photo book by ACC Art Books, Mankowitz reflects on his experience with Bush.

“I was brought in because the record company didn’t have an image that they could really promote Kate with. They had an album sleeve already done. They had a video of ‘Wuthering Heights,’ but they didn’t have an image and they desperately needed an image,” he recalls.

The record company asked Mankowitz to assess what they already had and come up with a look for the artist. After he watched the video for “Wuthering Heights,” he remembers, “The song blew me away, and the video was sort of an extraordinary experience, both audio and visual.”

“I realized that dance and movement were absolutely integral to her performance and clearly very important to her. So I proposed that we photograph her in dancer’s rehearsal clothes, which I’d always liked, I always thought [they] were very attractive, were funky and interesting. I thought that by putting her in a leotard, it would reflect this movement, balletic sort of background element. And it just paid off,” he continues.

Meeting the artist was a “wonderful, quite exhausting” experience for Mankowitz, who remembers her most as “very frenetic.”

“Her energy levels were absolutely amazing. At the end of a shoot, she’d fly out of the studio after whatever it was, seven, eight hours, and I’d be like an old washed-up rag lying on the sofa. And I’d say to my assistant, ‘Did we get anything?’ And he’d say, ‘Well, you shot 37 rolls of film, so I think we did,’ ” he shares with a laugh.

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Leotards became a recurring element in their collaborations, which included several sessions and the U.S. cover for her first album, The Kick Inside.

“I think I did four or five sessions with Kate. I worked throughout that first year and I did the American cover for her first album, The Kick Inside, because the American record company didn’t want to use the U.K. cover because they couldn’t work with that image. So it was a very fantastic collaboration,” he says.

Mankowitz concludes, “We’d do so much work and we’d get so much, but she was always moving. She was an amazing subject, an incredibly beautiful woman. I loved working with her and was thrilled that I was part of that first year, that initial success, the first tour. It was an extraordinary experience.”

Gered Mankowitz: Photographs from ACC Art Books is now available, wherever books are sold.

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