Pink Floyd - The Rob Verhorst Archives Book - Hardcover

Anyone who used to read an OOR, Music Maker or Hitkrant will undoubtedly have seen a photo of Rob Verhorst. His career spans more than forty years and in those more than four decades he has had almost all the greats in the field of music in front of his lens.

It was during a Pink Floyd concert in 1977 that his love for music and his passion for photography coincided beautifully. From this moment on he decided to turn his hobbies into his job and after a while he was able to support himself as a professional photographer.

In all those years he naturally built up an enormous archive. For “Pink Floyd – The Rob Verhorst Archives” part of that archive has finally been published together. A number of photos have already been featured in various (daily) newspapers, but a large part of the photos is now being shared with the general public for the first time. And that is absolutely worth it.

In chronological order, almost 35 years of Pink Floyd pass by. Starting with the shows in Ahoy on February 17 and 19, 1977 and ending with Roger Waters' solo show on April 8, 2011 in the Gelredome in Arnhem. This chronological order makes it easy to follow the evolution of the shows of Pink Floyd initially and later the solo performances of the gentlemen (but in particular Roger Waters). Because Verhorst managed to get the shows of “The Wall” in front of the camera in three different eras, it is especially good to see there what the improved technology can do with a show. Just the changed appearance of the large inflatable teacher is very cool to see.

The different periods are always introduced by Rob himself with some nice anecdotes from the relevant time. These pieces of text are accompanied by collages with concert tickets and articles in which photos of Rob have been published.

All these things ensure that this has become a very nice coffee table book, which you like to pick up regularly to leaf through. In the interview I had with Rob, he indicates that he wants to do this kind of project for more artists (after he had already done this with Prince). If that is going to make for just as nice a collection as with this book, he should certainly not fail to do so.