The iconic singer and talented artist Amy Winehouse passed away on the 23rd of July 2011, leaving two incredible albums ‘Frank’ and ‘Back to Black’ behind her. It’s been 10 years since her death, and a new photographic exhibition honours the late singer.
Phil Griffin is a photographer and music video director who worked with Winehouse on the videos for her second album Back to Black which featured hits including Rehab and Tears Dry On Their Own. Griffin set up the exhibition, which features photographs taken during the era of Back to Black, to encourage people to focus on the blues artist’s achievements rather than her notorious and tragic life story and death.
Griffin explained to the Guardian: “I want there to be a positive flow of conversation about her. She’s not just a tragic figure but a human being who was incredibly talented. She was a girl with a story to tell and she wasn’t afraid to tell it.”
In sharing some of the beautiful pictures taken during the shoots for the Back to Black music videos, Griffin hopes to show her as the artist she was not the tabloid headline she became, and he discusses how he thinks her life may have gone differently in an earlier age: “If she’d been born in a different age and was allowed to grow in the way that Diana Ross grew or the way that Ella Fitzgerald grew, she might still have remained a troubled figure, but I think we might still have her.”
Griffin is not the only person close to Amy who wants her story to be recast in a different light. Her family has also released a new documentary called Reclaiming Amy, which tells her story as a person, in contrast to the 2015 documentary Amy, which was critical of her family, and called ‘a disgrace’ by her father.
Griffin’s exhibition is titled ‘Amy in the Light’ and opens at the Brownsword Hepworth Gallery in Knightsbridge, London on 26th July. The exhibition is free to attend.