In 1972 David Bowie invented Ziggy Stardust — an alien rock messiah from Mars — and with him the visual grammar of glam-rock. Brian Duffy and Celia Philo's 1973 *Aladdin Sane* sleeve, with its red-and-electric-blue lightning bolt slashed across Bowie's cream-pale face, became the canonical Bowie image and one of the most recognizable photographs of the twentieth century.

The aesthetic is saturated, theatrical, androgynous: cream skin against deep-black backdrop, a hard-edged lightning bolt as both ornament and signature, Mick Rock's stage-flash photography. It treats pop music as costume drama and design as a stage to perform on.