The Presence 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 had amassed a huge body of work from forty years of creating iconic covers and wanted it to be seen in fuller glory.

Led Zeppelin’s album Presence was among the first to be considered, with a cover that was able to match the stature of its contents – Stephen Davis, in Rolling Stone, 20 May 1976, said,

“Led Zeppelin’s seventh LP confirms this quartet’s status as champions of the known universe”.

Hipgnosis’ design for Presence was so successful that Swan Song sent out a limited edition of 1,000 three-dimensional plastic models of the obelisk to promote the album and Presence hit #1 on the Billboard album chart in the week of May 1st, 1976, giving the band its fifth career chart topper. Hipgnosis designer George Hardie told Q Magazine in 2003 that,

“The phrase back then was ‘nostalgia isn’t what it used to be’. We were interested in representing both that and the fact that with the advent of the television set, a living room now had two centres to it – the TV and the fireplace. We set about inventing something that was as important as both of these two objects called the object that could take centre place in a room. There was no brief…I used card and black velvet. We nicknamed it ‘The Present’. The actual object, a hole in fact, wasn’t present at all, but absent. The collage was shot using a Hasselblad camera with a 50mm wide-angle lens. On seeing the finished item the band were naturally overjoyed.”

Storm Thorgerson said that,

“It was also designed to symbolise the overwhelming presence of Led Zeppelin’s music. The band liked the concept so much that they decided to call the album Presence after the project.”

The original artwork was re-assembled for this edition and printed in stunning 6 colour pigment inks.

Signed by: Aubrey Powell

Image size: 16 x 24 inches / Paper size: 26 x 33 inches

Edition size: 500

Print type: Archival Inkjet (Giclée)

ABOUT AUBREY POWELL

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