Top image: Keith toking, California, 1969 © Michael Cooper

Dubbed the ‘court’ photographer of The Rolling Stones due to his close friendship (and once roommates) with lead guitarist Keith Richards, photographer Michael Cooper held a unique position from which to photograph the young band. As part of the band’s extended family he was able to capture intimate moments direct from the Stone’s inner circle during their rise to icon status during the 60s, helping establish them as icons of music, fashion, sexuality and danger.

Proud Gallery’s latest exhibition Courting the Stones celebrates Cooper’s work, curated by Cooper’s son Adam Cooper. The gallery’s King’s Road location is a natural home for the series, as the Sixties epicentre of the cultural zeitgeist, The Stones lived together on the iconic Chelsea road before finding global fame.

Cooper was one of those relatively unknown characters whose wide involvement in cultural history is often overlooked. Appearing to be everywhere at once, he made a brief cameo in Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg’s 1970 film Performance alongside Mick Jagger, attended Keith Richards’ Sussex pad, Redlands, when a party being held there was raided by police in 1967 led to drugs charges being laid against Richards and Jagger, and was in Marrakech in 1967 with Anita Pallenberg, Richards and Brian Jones when the band’s aesthetic shifted irrevocably and Jones’ decline picked up momentum.

Cooper’s Chelsea studio became the creative milieu of the swinging epoch, attracting the most defining faces – dubbed the ‘Chelsea Set’ – such as Marianne Faithfull, Eric Clapton, artists Cecil Beaton, Andy Warhol, Peter Blake and David Hockney and writers William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Terry Southern. Cooper actually loaned Southern a copy of A Clockwork Orange in 1967 and the two planned a film adaptation which Cooper intended to direct, casting Mick Jagger as Alex and the other members of The ‘Stones as Alex’s gang of droogs (epic). Sadly it was shelved by Lord Chamberlin for “youthful incitement”.

As well as photographing The ‘Stones Cooper shot other iconic bands from the 60s and 70s, He’s the man behind photographing The Beatles’ seminal 1967 LP Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album artwork, and also took the mega psychedelic 3D cover photograph for The Rolling Stones 1967 LP Their Satanic Majesties Request.

Having committed suicide in 1973, Cooper’s influence endures to this day, providing an intimate focus on music’s most defining period.

‘Courting The Stones’ runs from 16th October to 22nd November at Proud Chelsea, 161 King’s Rd, London SW3 5XP