Oldies rock classic album covers
Residents of an aged care facility in London have sparked a viral sensation by recreating the covers of classic albums while in lockdown.
Music
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The pandemic is getting weird now. Good weird.
Richard Seker’s recreations of classic album covers featuring the residents of the London aged care home where he works have become an online sensation, sparking joy in some otherwise grim days.
Mr Seker told News Corp he devised the shots as a fun activity for the residents of Sydmar Lodge while the centre was locked down and they were cut off from their families.
“(The residents) were pretty willing straight away when I mentioned (the idea),” he said. “It was either a roll of the eyes, or they got excited because it was something different. They don’t want to sit around all day long. They want to be doing things.”
The shots seem full of affection – both for their subjects and the iconic record images they playfully rip off.
Mick Rock’s famous up-lit shot of Queen in their Bohemian Rhapsody heyday has been reworked as a homage to the facility’s carers, complete with lots of funny details. Freddie Mercury’s fingers – so dramatically splayed in the original – have been recreated with a nurse in surgical gloves, while the topmost figure is a staff member with hair as big as Brian May’s.
The 41 year old said his subjects were all good sports about the project, even when it came to baring skin and allowing themselves to be face-painted, as one resident did in order to recreate the cover of David Bowie’s 1973 classic Aladdin Sane.
“Roma is an amazing lady,” Mr Seker said. “She’s a very strong character, as you can probably tell, but she’s also game for anything. She was like, ‘OK, why not, do whatever you want, draw on my face’. If a resident says that I just want to oblige.”
The “hobby photographer” said he could not pick a favourite image of the 12 he has done so far, but he did have ideas for more in the series.
“We had such a laugh doing it, it was really good fun,” he said. “I sent the images to the families first and they loved them. Suddenly it exploded, they were being shared and shared again.
“It was amazing for the residents to see the love that was shared, the comments that we received in their thousands, it was just unvbelieviable.”
Mr Seker said he was humbled by the “overwhelming joy” that the images had created.
“There is a lot of love in the world. People do want to smile. There are still good moments in this pandemic, and we have to cling on to those,” he said.
Originally published as Oldies rock classic album covers