Cream--Tapani Talo

spiral bound folio album (460 x 630mm.), 23 pages, containing 18 modern photographic prints showing Cream in performance in Helsinki on 13 November 1967, each photograph (sheet size approx 330 x 480mm.) inscribed, numbered "1/10" and dated "2015" by the photographer, and laid down at four corners onto the pages of the album, title and photographer's name stencilled in black along the lower edge of the upper cover of the album

Tapani Talo was born in Finland in 1950, and from the age of 14 worked as a freelance press and fashion photographer. By 1967, Talo was regularly attending concerts in order to photograph the bands performing. A month before the Cream concert, he had photographed John Mayall's Bluesbrakers during their Scandinavian tour although had passed up the opportunity to see Hendrix earlier in the year. Working in low light on a new type of film engineered for shooting very fast, this Cream gig remains his favourite as a press photographer:

"The stage was completely unadorned with barely a light but a couple of spots, and the stage was a vast expanse with two stacks of speakers...and yet from the first notes we knew this was the real thing...We captured the real essence of their personality."