Manchester, its bands, its fashions, its attitude, has defined pop culture for the best part of four decades. Joy Division, The Fall, Buzzcocks, New Order, The Smiths, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses, Oasis. These were the bands that shaped two generations of teenagers and changed the course of pop music. Manchester: Looking for the Light through the Pouring Rain is a portrait of these individuals, the city, and their times. Whether it be on a rain-soaked stage in Brazil, a rented room in Whalley Range, or on the dancefloor of the legendary Hacienda, Kevin Cummins' exquisite photographs capture the anarchic energy of the Manchester pop moment. This stunning visual record of the city and its pop history is complemented by four textual contributions from Paul Morley, Stuart Maconie, Gavin Martin and John Harris. What is it about that city that makes it the Memphis of the UK? Cummins' photographic record of the past 30 years captures the highs, the lows and the transcendent pop moments of Manchester's most famous sons.

A ROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR "To flip through the book is to be immersed back in the glory days of Cool Britannia... and it's just as cool as you remember" GQ Remember Britpop and the '90s through hundreds of its most striking images - with many seen here for the very first time. Taken by renowned photographer Kevin Cummins, chief photographer at the NME for more than a decade, the images in this book explore the rise and fall of Cool Britannia and all that came with it. Nostalgic, anarchic and featuring contributions from icons of the Britpop era including Noel Gallagher and Brett Anderson, While We Were Getting High is a seminal portrait of a decade like no other. Artists featured include: Oasis Blur Suede Pulp Elastica Supergrass The Charlatans Gene Sleeper Kula Shaker Echobelly The Bluetones ...and many more

"AS ICONIC PHOTOGRAPHER, ADVENTUROUS FAN AND INSIDER EYE-WITNESS, KEVIN CUMMINS HAS ALWAYS BEEN WHERE THE CULTURAL ACTION IS. MIXING MEMORY & DESIRE WILL MAKE YOU SEE DAVID BOWIE IN A SURPRISING AND STIMULATING NEW WAY." -PAUL MORLEY "DAVID BOWIE WAS ON A CREATIVE JOURNEY THROUGH MUSIC, FASHION AND ART. A JOURNEY UNPARALLELED IN POPULAR CULTURE. WHAT A PRIVILEGE IT IS FOR US THAT KEVIN CUMMINS WAS THERE TO CAPTURE THIS JOURNEY. HIS WONDERFUL BOOK SHOWS US EXACTLY WHY BOWIE WAS SO UNIQUE." -NOEL GALLAGHER "KEVIN BRILLIANTLY CAPTURES THE ESSENCE OF THE GREAT MAN IN THESE REMARKABLE PHOTOGRAPHS. CUMMINS IS SO ADEPT AT BREAKING DOWN THE BARRIER OF THE CAMERA, YOU SENSE BOWIE IS COMPLETELY AT EASE WHEN THEY WORKED TOGETHER" -GOLDIE The career of celebrated photographer Kevin Cummins began on 29th June 1973 when, as a nineteen-year-old photography student, he photographed David Bowie. That image is now in the renowned photography collection of the V&A Museum and marked the beginning of Kevin Cummins' four-decade-long visual chronicle of David Bowie's remarkable career. David Bowie: Mixing Memory & Desire includes some of the best portraits of Bowie ever taken, the majority of which have never been published until now. From those legendary Bowie gigs in the early 1970s, through to a poignant image taken outside his apartment in New York in 2016, Cummins has captured the many faces of Bowie and created a book that is essential for Bowie fans everywhere.

A Rough Trade Book of the Year 'No one has captured the look of alternative UK music over the past half a century more tellingly than Kevin Cummins.' - Simon Armitage 'Kevin Cummins is a true master in being able to capture the essence of music, the soul of the band. Whatever he does however he does it is a mystery to me but it's pure genius.' - Rankin 'Few photographers had such a close connection to The Fall as Manchester-based Kevin Cummins, and his new book, Telling Stories, is a rich visual history of one of the city's most beloved and enduring bands.' - Record Collector Magazine 'Kevin has the uncanny ability of capturing the inner mood of musicians. Be it the dynamics within a pensive Joy Division, or the sense surrounding the fledgeling Fall that something special was around the corner for us all. Kevin's book is nothing less than a remarkable document of a bewildering and defiant anti-fashion movement born in Prestwich, north Manchester in the grimy mid-70s.' - Marc Riley 'Capturing forty years of the band's career via his archive, the legendary photographer (whose recent book, Juvenes, documented the story of Joy Division) gives his take on the phenomenon of The Fall and the late, great Mark E. Smith.' - Vive le Rock Contains never-before-seen images. Foreword by Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate. From chaotic early gigs to their final years, NME photographer Kevin Cummins provides a definitive, unique perspective on cult favourites The Fall. In this stunning visual history spanning four decades, discover how and why they emerged as one of the most innovative, boundary-breaking bands in modern music. With a foreword by Poet Laureate and Fall fan Simon Armitage and an interview with Eleni Poulou, as well as never-before-seen images from Cummins' archive, this is the ultimate visual companion to The Fall.

'One of the greatest music photographers of all time...this book is indispensable to anyone who is a fan of Morrissey, or of great photography ' Classic Pop magazine 'Unsurprisingly, given Cummin's history, the photographs are beautifully composed, from the live shots with their webbing of shredded shirts and outstretched arms to the lyrical portraits on staircases or Japanese streets' Q Magazine Taken by renowned photographer Kevin Cummins and featuring hundreds of previously unseen images, Alone and Palely Loitering chronicles Morrissey's world as he emerged from The Smiths and established himself as a solo artist. Breathtaking photographs cover chaotic live performances, intimate portrait sessions and snatched moments backstage and on tour over a ten-year period. Cummins provides insightful commentary on the art of photography and what it was like to work and travel with Morrissey. The book also includes portraits of from fans around the world with Morrissey-inspired tattoos, featuring an essay by literary academic Dr Gail Crowther exploring how this art form is used to display devotion to a unique musician.

In the early nineties, a group of disaffected and fiercely political young men from the Welsh valleys exploded onto a British music scene still in thrall to rave and acid house.It was the legendary photographer Kevin Cummins who captured James, Sean, Richey and Nicky in their most uncompromising, glam-fixated early years. Assassinated Beauty is a unique record of a band on a mission to reclaim rock and roll through literature, image and thrilling guitar pop. Working at the NME and already famous for his association with the classic images of Joy Division, The Smiths and Stone Roses, Cummins was the ideal photographer to capture the essence of a band who understood and manipulated androgynous and decadent imagery. These photographs document the period just before the release of Generation Terrorists (1992) up to Holy Bible (1995) and the subsequent disappearance of guitarist and lyricist, Richey Edwards. A revealing mix of studio shots and never-seen-before behind-the-scenes photographs and the ultimate portrait of one of the last great British rock and roll bands.

Christmas Day 1977, a day to be spent with family and loved ones, unless of course you'd decided to spend it with The Sex Pistols. The punk band, at the centre of a tabloid frenzy and banned from just about every venue in the country, had booked themselves into a small club in Huddersfield to perform a benefit in support of striking West Yorkshire fire fighters. That evening, the band took to the stage to perform what would become their final UK gig. There to capture the chaos was photographer Kevin Cummins. No stranger to The Sex Pistols, he'd been there at that gig at Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall just 18 months previously. Kevin incurred the fury of his own family to forgo Christmas in order to travel across The Pennines to document the event. Every frame Kevin shot is here, for the first time, in this book of more than 150 colour and black and white photographs, each beautifully capturing Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Steve Jones, and Paul Cook as they play together for the last time in their home country. Just weeks later The Pistols would break up and a year later, Sid would be dead. "You've had the Queen's speech. Now you're going to get the Sex Pistols at Christmas. Enjoy." - Johnny Rotten