Anna Gabriel, Peter Gabriel‘s oldest daughter, recently released a unique photo book titled Eye-D that features close-up images of the eyes of dozens of famous music artists and other celebrities, including her father.
At a recent New York City event celebrating the book’s release, Anna and Peter both chatted with ABC Audio about the project.
Anna explained that the initial photos appearing in the book were shot for her father’s 2010 covers album Scratch My Back and its 2013 companion And I’ll Scratch Yours, which features other artists’ versions of Peter’s songs.
“[W]e wanted to shoot all the artists that he’d covered or they covered him. And we thought of an interesting way to do it would be … to use their identification, and we sort of shot their eyes and their thumbs,” Anna said. “So I did have many artists … artists on the album, and … as I was going, thought, ‘I’ll continue on with this … and maybe just do the eyes,” ’cause that for me was more interesting than the thumbs.”
Not surprisingly, Anna’s dad was among the first artists whose eyes she shot, and Peter explained that she actually rejected the first photo she took of him.
“She told me to do it again and get it right,” Peter quipped to ABC Audio.
Anna added, “I felt that the first one was actually too dark. It felt like it was … the wrong impression of him for me … So I did it again with a much nicer one, I think.”
Asked what some of his favorite photos in the book are, Peter mentioned ones of Mick Fleetwood and Debbie Harry. As for how he feels about his daughter’s work, he said, “I’m a very proud dad.”
Visit EyeDPhotographs.com for more info about the book.
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