This Man has the Greatest Job In The World

Dean Chalkley is a rock photographer par excellence.

I promise I’ll get back to talking about my mundane early life soon, but it isn’t every day you meet someone in your home town who has the best job in the world…

It’s probably just as well. If you constantly met a stream of people who had glamorous jobs it would start to get very irritating indeed. Once in a blue moon though is just fine – especially when they are nice people.

I met such a person today. His name is Dean Chalkley, he was a lovely bloke, (he even let me use one of his portraits for this post) and his job is to photograph rock stars. And not the rubbish ones like Steps, One Direction and Nickelback either.

I’m talking The White Stripes, Amy Winehouse, Noel Gallagher, Dizzee Rascal, The Horrors, The Arctic Monkeys and The Strokes…

Short of being Scarlett Johanssen‘s masseuse or Chocolate taster to the Queen I can’t think of any job that beats what Dean Chalkley does. And yes, he’s even photographed Scarlett Johanssen. But not the Queen. Yet.

Not only does Dean have the Greatest Job in the World, he’s also very good at it. He has worked for the NME for over a decade and has an exhibition on in my home town of Leigh On Sea at the White Wall Space until 29th Feb. I stumbled across it by accident after an afternoon at the beach (good to see my finger on the pulse of what’s happening…) and needless to say the exhibition, like his portraits, is beautiful.

Do check out his web-site here – the images are lovely and many are for sale at galleries from time to time.

Also check out his forthcoming short film called The New Faces which is a quirky twenty minute piece featuring views of the Mod scene. Fans of The Who, Paul Weller, Northern Soul and Quadrophenia make a date in your diary now: The show premieres at The Book Club Basement on the 8th March and you can see it on-line the day after at www.showstudio.com.

I love rock photography, and have bought a couple of books on the subject over the years. The National Gallery had a great exhibition called “Beatles to Bowie” a couple of years back and there’s a gorgeous book I have called “A Star is Born” which accompanied an exhibition at The Museum Folkswang in Germany.

Looking through the latter book I see a striking image of the White Stripes (above) by none other than…Dean Chalkley.

Small world…

Record #14 – The White Stripes -Black Math