While only shooting David for that two year period — including the album covers for Station to Station and Low — Schapiro had another opportunity to join him on tour in 1987, but it didn’t come to fruition.

“I didn’t speak to him for a while and then in 1987, he called me wanting me to go on tour with him, about 15 minutes before me and my family were about to leave to the airport to France for a vacation,” he remembers. “It was really a tough decision, but I really had to stay with my family. I would have loved to have done it. But it was last minute, in terms of where we were at with our plans, so I just couldn’t do it. Especially during that time period, we were close in terms of what we did and we had a very good relationship.”

Like most of us, Schapiro had no idea about Bowie’s bout with liver cancer, that day in 1987 would have been his last chance to shoot him. But Bowie did give his blessing to the project from afar.

“I had no knowledge at all,” Schapiro says of his health. “In terms of this project, I sent a message to Bowie through his assistant asking if he would write a few things for the book. I got a note back that David really wished me the best with the project and hoped to see it in the Spring of 2016. But I had no idea what he was going through. I think he kept that very, very quiet. You see all of these things about Burt Reynolds, which become very public about what his health is like. There’s nothing like that about Bowie. I would imagine that after his heart attack, it changed his whole way of looking at things and he was much more involved with his family and things of that sort.”

In addition to the book, Schapiro has also been tapped to provide photos for a forthcoming David Bowie box set, which will cover the 1974–76 period. “They’ve asked me to come up with eight pictures that haven’t been seen for that box set. David actually picked that cover himself in October.”

With the Bowie photobook available now, Steve Schapiro has graciously offered Cuepoint a look at select images with exclusive commentary from the 100+ page volume.