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bowieovertheyears
Click through the gallery to see the GIF frame by frame.
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Post-Davy Jones-era.
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Space Odyssey-era.
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From his early days playing with the Spiders from Mars.
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Diamond Dogs-era.
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Ziggy Stardust's early years.
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Aladdin Sane-era.
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Bowie famously showed up at an Amsterdam press conference wearing a patch over his right eye.
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Golden Years-era.
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From the Ashes to Ashes video.
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As seen in Labyrinth.
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David Bowie has spent his life as a chameleon, evolving in style and sound at a once-staggering rate. Now 68—an age fans who’ve followed him throughout the decades thought they might never see him hit—Bowie is a more reclusive, modest man, though it’s not to say his eccentricities have been swallowed entirely with age.
Still, it’s almost staggering to try and capture the drastic changes he went through in his early days; in just five years, he transformed from bob-haired Davy Jones to the lighting faced extraterrestrial front-person of the Spiders from Mars. From there, he evolved faster, with eye-patches, mime costumes and eerie, minimalist German synths. Artist Helen Green has taken on a noble task, then, in trying to draw out his style evolution.
Done in celebration of his recent birthday, her painstakingly detailed doodles can be seen below in an excellent, seemingly all inclusive print.
Perhaps even better still, Green GIF’d the images, and the results are quite staggering. Above, watch as Bowie ages before your very eyes and, in clicking through the gallery, follow through our attempts to date the progressions. Some may be out of order, some may be off by a year or so, but trust us—it’s no small task sorting differently parted hair-swoops by year. Helen Green was able to, and for that, we applaud her.