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David bowie eyes5/28/2023 ![]() His eyes could appear eerie and mismatched, producing a captivating or mesmeric gaze from on stage or through the lens of a camera.Īnd the uncanny appearance of Bowie’s eyes was ideal for a performer who embraced ideas of the alien, the outsider, the otherworldly and the occult. This mystique helped fuel some of Bowie's greatest creations and enhance iconic images, such as the album cover for Heroes (1977). Over time, Bowie apparently thanked his friend for his notorious eye injury, telling Underwood that it gave him 'a kind of mystique'. From that day, Bowie's left pupil remained in a fixed open position. But Bowie's left eye remained seriously damaged.Īn impulsive punch had accidentally scratched the eyeball, resulting in paralysis of the muscles that contract the iris. The two performed together in various bands before Underwood turned from music to painting and graphics. This can clearly be seen in the Aladdin Sane – Eyes Open photograph by Brian Duffy (shot in 1973 but unpublished until 2011) that was used as the lead image on the posters for the V&A David Bowie is (2013) exhibition.Īnecdotally, the cause of Bowie's anisocoria was attributed to the fallout from a lusty scrap in the spring of 1962.īowie had come to blows with a friend, George Underwood, over a girl they were both hoping to date.īoth were just 15 at the time and their friendship seemingly remained intact. Red eye occurs when light reflects off of the fundus (the back of the eye), through an open pupil, and captures a red coloration by picking up tonality from the blood in the choroid lining of the eyeball. This sometimes adds to the appearance of a different colour when contrasted to his right eye. The dilated pupil of his left eye was also potentially more prone to the effect of 'red eye'. So Bowie's left eye often appeared to be quite dark, due to the blackness of his dilated pupil, when compared to the blue of his right iris. And despite the fistfight, the boys’ relationship healed: The two became lifelong friends and artistic collaborators.Anisocoria can create the illusion of having different coloured eyes because the fixed pupil does not respond to changes in light, while the other pupil does Bowie was able to further use these to full effect thanks to his major case of red-eye, since photograph flashes bounced off his dilated pupil. In Bowie’s case, his left pupil remained permanently expanded, leading to his famous pair of blue and black eyes. In darkness, the pupils expand and do the opposite to allow as much light in as possible so you can get into bed without tripping over an errant object on the floor. When a person with typical, uninjured eyes stumbles into light, of course, their pupils contract and become smaller, showing more of their iris. “It wasn’t a very hard punch but obviously caught me at a rather odd angle.” Underwood’s fingernail had scratched the surface of Bowie’s eyeball, paralyzing the muscles that contract the iris. “At first he thought I was kidding,” Bowie recounted to Spitz. As the story goes, Underwood wasn’t exactly pleased, and in fit of passion reportedly punched Bowie smack-dab in his left eye. Bowie, it seems, was in the throes of teenage love, and his best friend in school, Underwood, not only was crushing hard on a girl but found out Bowie was similarly enamored with the same girl, too, when the singer began “boasting to my mate about what a Casanova I was,” he told biographer Mark Spitz in an interview. In the spring of 1962, Bowie got into a fight with his school pal - and, later, lifetime artistic partner - George Underwood. His eyes were the product not of genes but a teenage fistfight that resulted in anisocoria, a condition in which a person’s eyes have different-size pupils. ![]() Heterochromia can be expressed as two outright different colors, like actress Kate Bosworth’s hazel right eye and blue left eye, or a variegation of an iris color, like Mila Kunis’s, which are a lighter brown in one eye and a darker tinge in the other.īut Bowie’s case was different. ![]() ![]() It’s hereditary and usually harmless, and the condition is in fact much more common in dogs, cats, and horses. What gave Bowie’s eyes their hypnotic dual colors? As Kevin Hunt reports for the Conversation, some people mistakenly assume it was caused by heterochromia, a condition in which a person has two different iris colors. Part of his stage persona revolved not just around his vivid makeup and incredible gift for music, but also for his magnetic, almost eerie pair of eyes: one clear blue, the other a moody black. After David Bowie’s death on Sunday from cancer, this week we’re remembering a genius musician with a gift for showmanship. ![]()
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