The In Through The Out Door limited edition archival inkjet print was produced in an edition of 500 by the Hipgnosis founding team of Aubrey Powell and Storm Thorgerson. The idea to revisit album cover artwork for publication as original, limited edition prints came from Storm Thorgerson in 2000 – he wanted his work to be seen in fuller glory. Led Zeppelin’s album In Through The Out Door was an obvious contender.

“It was the most expensive cover we did……that cover was better than the album!”
Jimmy Page

Storm Thorgerson recounted to Q Magazine in 2003 that:

“Led Zeppelin were mega huge in terms of sales, their reputation and their sound. We wanted to reflect that in our artwork, go way over the top. We wanted the cover to really stretch the listener’s imagination. The band and Peter Grant kept saying how the LP was like a lick of new paint, a return to their bluesy rock roots, but updated with a different twist, so the colour was to represent that. It was like you were looking inside the bar through its dusty window and the smear was where you’d wiped the pane with your sleeve to peer through. Peter Grant said we could put it in a brown paper bag and it would still top the charts. So we did and he was right!”

The album was released with six different versions of the bar scene. Storm wrote that,

“This is a design I love dearly to this day. The whole atmosphere is frozen in time and etched in the memory. The sepia quality was meant to evoke a non-specific past and to allow the brushstroke across the middle to be better rendered in colour and so make a contrast. This self same brushstroke was like the swish of a wiper across a wet windscreen, like a lick of fresh paint across a faded surface, a new look to an old scene, which was what Led Zeppelin told us about their album. A lick of fresh paint, as per Led Zeppelin, and the music on this album. It somehow grew in proportion and became six viewpoints of the same man in the bar, seen by the six other characters. Six different versions of the same image. As Robert Plant agreed later, it was very over the top, but then rock n’ roll is over the top.”

The edition was printed in stunning 6 colour pigment inks.

Signed by: Aubrey Powell

Image size: 19.5 x 19.5 inches / Paper size: 26 x 33 inches

Edition size: 500

Print type: Archival Inkjet (Giclée)

Listen to Po talk to Emily about this image on the art of the album podcast

ABOUT AUBREY POWELL

ABOUT STORM THORGERSON

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