Written by Harriet Verney, CNN

On June 1, 1967, the very same day The Beatles launched "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," a young David Bowie released his own self-titled debut LP.

The photographer he enlisted to shoot the album's cover was Gerald Fearnley, brother of Dek Fearnley (one of Bowie's bandmates at the time).

The album was not a success, but the pictures from the shoot have gained a unique significance.

Remaining largely unseen until recently, they are some of the earliest official images of the musician.

The portraits have now been published in their entirety in a new photo book.

Featuring Bowie in makeup in some shots, posing dramatically in others, the images act as a prelude to some of his future looks.

Rare photos of a young David Bowie have been published in a new book Credit: Gerald Fearnley

In the book's foreword Fearnley remembers a young Bowie: "David, especially, seemed very serious about what he was doing, he seemed trustworthy. He and my brother would often be in the kitchen writing. He used to play with the children, games of Monopoly or teaching them how to play the penny whistle. David was great with kids, very pleasant, always polite."

A photo by Gearald Fearnley in "Bowie Unseen: Portraits of an Artist as a Young Man" Credit: Gerald Fearnley

For Fearnley, having started his career as an RAF photographer before opening a still life studio near Oxford Street in London, the shoot with Bowie was out of the ordinary.

In the book he admits he can't remember why he was asked to shoot the pictures, "probably because I was the only one he knew with a studio and a camera."