'Roma Cohen Sydmar Lodge' print by Robert Speker with Sydmar Lodge Care Home

Print 'Roma Cohen Sydmar Lodge' reconstruction album cover by Robert Speker, 2020. Produced with Sydmar Lodge Care Home residents and staff during the first Covid-19 Lockdown in the UK. Copying an album cover by David Bowie, Roma appears head and shoulders, naked, with a lightning bolt painted in red and blue on her face. She wears long earrings and a chain necklace. Lettering in red and blue top right and bottom centre. Printed at the size of a standard LP record sleeve.

This set of 12 Care Home Album Covers attracted significant media attention in July 2020 after being tweeted by photographer Robert Speker. Working as Activities Coordinator at Sydmar Lodge Care Home, North London, Speker collaborated with residents and staff to recreate a series of famous album covers. In each case the figures in the album photographs are replaced by a care home individual, and the artist’s name or album title are replaced with the new sitter’s name or a reference to the care home.

This was the fourth photo in the series, and recreated David Bowie's 1973 album ‘Aladdin Sane’. Speker explains that, “Roma had a similar hairdo to that of David Bowie, so it was just a case of me applying the iconic lightning bolt across Roma's face with face paint, and she was as obliging as ever. It was important to keep Roma's jewellery on for the photo and I directed the pose ensuring the eyes were closed to just the right degree. It was particularly humbling to receive positive comments on Twitter from David Bowie's widow Iman and his son Duncan Jones.”

These first 12 album covers produced by Speker and care home contributors were developed into a charity calendar for the Alzheimer’s Society for 2021. Together they help to capture the particular experience of those living and working in care homes during the Covid-19 pandemic, which attracted wide media attention and public criticism for seeming to be ‘abandoned’ and for the extreme isolation imposed on residents, unable to see loved ones for many months. Equally, however, Speker’s joyful work demonstrates the creativity that flowered across society during the first lockdown, and the work by many artists to offer support – whether financial or emotional – to NHS staff, the wider public, and each other.