Book review: Jon Kirkman - Tales From Photographic Oceans, Giants Under The Sun (2020)

Jon Kirkman's limited edition Tales From Photographic Oceans Giants Under the Sun was published in April 2020, a photodocumentary of Yes’ live performances from 1969 - 2019 using previously unseen images primarily supplied by fans, many of which are of professional quality. There’s an introductory piece ‘The Camera on the Cover’ by Tony Howard, a former Southampton denizen who now lives in Canada; it’s his Olympus OM10 on the cover, used for photos of solo shows by Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman in 1980 and of Yes during the Drama tour that feature in the book. He relates how he had to hide his camera at the venue and how it was taken away from him part way through that Drama show, which chimes with my experience of attempting to take my Olympus OM2N into a Yes gig, having it removed at the bag search before the show then returned to me afterwards (I can only think that this was the 90125 tour at Wembley because I managed to get surreptitious photos of Peter Hammill and Camel at around that time.)
Broadcaster, author, journalist and Cruise to the Edge co-host Kirkman got into Yes music in 1972 through And You and I from Close to the Edge being shown on The Old Grey Whistle Test, then hearing debut album Yes via the son of a friend of his mother, and being a Liverpudlian, connecting with the cover of The Beatles of Every Little Thing. He’s since built up a close working relationship and friendships with the band, interviewing 16 of the 18 members for his books Yes - Time and a Word: The Yes Interviews (2013) and its updated version Dialogue (2017) making him ideally suited to curate such a project. It’s therefore not surprising he first photo is of Peter Banks in 1969, in black and white, captured in mid air holding a blonde Telecaster above his head. It’s striking not only because it’s a well-composed image but because it’s not the white Rickenbacker everyone associates with Banks during his time in Yes. Each group of photos is accompanied by the show’s set list and a photo of the ticket stub, and given the difficulties of clandestine photography in theatres during the pre-digital era, it’s not surprising that there’s better coverage of the band from this millennium.

This book isn’t for everyone. For a start it’s a limited print run of 300, which makes it quite expensive, but for the hard-core fan it’s a really good addition to the library of Yes biographies, despite the paucity of words. And though there’s not going to be a second print run, there is a possibly of a second edition because of the overwhelming number of photos submitted. I’ll be signing up for that, too.

Details of how to order Jon Kirkman’s Tales From Photographic Oceans Giants Under the Sun can be found on his website: https://jonkirkman.co.uk/product/tales-from-photographic-oceans/