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Limited edition color 26.75 x 27.75 print of Karl Ferris’s photograph used for the front cover of the U.S. release of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s 1967 debut album, Are You Experienced. The circular fisheye image shows Hendrix flanked by Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell against vivid red foliage. It is numbered 54/95 and signed in the lower border in pencil by Ferris. Rolled and in fine condition, with trivial wear to edges and borders.
Hendrix was unhappy with the UK cover of Are You Experienced, so manager Chas Chandler brought in London photographer Karl Ferris to create imagery for the upcoming U.S. release that better matched the music. He shot the band in Kew Gardens, beneath a tree whose foliage reached the ground, photographing them from a low angle through a fisheye lens and using an experimental color infrared technique he had developed. Ferris also picked out the band’s clothes. In Hendrix’s cupboard he found a jacket an artist had decorated for him with eyes and psychedelic swirls, which Hendrix called his ‘Gypsy Eyes’ jacket. Having arrived late, Ferris and the band lost the light and returned the following day for more photographs. The image used on the US cover turned out to be the first frame on the first roll.
Ferris is widely regarded as a pioneer of psychedelic photography, working with Eric Clapton, Cream, Donovan, the Hollies, and Hendrix. His images appeared on all three US Jimi Hendrix Experience albums released in Hendrix’s lifetime: Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love (where his group portrait was used as an illustration), and Electric Ladyland. He also created the cover imagery for Donovan’s A Gift From a Flower to a Garden and the Hollies’ Evolution.
