Melt

Melt is one of a collection of limited edition archival inkjet prints published to celebrate a catalogue of truly remarkable and unique sound works by Peter Gabriel. Melt was the Peter Gabriel 3 album cover art, referred to colloquially as Melt.

Storm Thorgerson, from Hipgnosis, introduced Peter to the work that Les Krims was doing with Polaroids. They began experimenting with hundreds of Polaroids, having fun squashing and squeezing and smearing the developing images, a technique later known as Krimsography.

“Since this procedure is dead easy we did it loads of times along with Peter Gabriel, disfiguring himself, by manipulating Polaroids as they developed. Peter impressed us greatly with his ability to appear in an unflattering way, preferring the theatrical or artistic to the cosmetic. Because we couldn’t decide on a favourite, for they were all great fun, we used lots!”

“There was a photographer called Les Krims, who discovered that if you take a Polaroid and you squash it you can get the colours to run. We used to go after them with different objects and burnt matches, and coins, and fingers, and all sorts of things and it was a lot of fun because you had to get the timing right, but you got some wonderful effects out of the distortions.” Storm Thorgerson.

Melt comprises two editions: a ‘standard’ size print in an edition of 99 and an XL print in an edition of 25. Every print in this collection has been signed by Peter Gabriel himself.

READ ABOUT THE COLLECTION