Unseen Amy
Photographer pal’s intimate pictures
AMY Winehouse sits on a tree and takes a bough as we never saw her – fresh-faced, make-up free and so relaxed.
New pictures of the iconic singer show her with natural tight curls rather than her trademark beehive and accompanying black eyeliner.
She is captured being buried in sand, riding a horse and posing in jeans and a bikini top.
Amy was 24 and the photos were taken on the Caribbean isle of St Lucia at the start of 2009 by Blake Wood, a US snapper.
The singer and Blake, then 22, were only ever good friends and he was dubbed “Good Blake”, while her jailbird husband Blake Fielder Civil – who she would later divorce – was “Bad Blake”.
The previous 12 months had been tumultuous for Amy. Despite
five Grammys in February 2008, she battled addiction to alcohol, crack cocaine and heroin. Fans booed her at V Festival and Bestival that summer. As stress mounted, Amy invited Wood to St Lucia, where she cleaned up her act and he began to take photos. But when Back To Black star Amy died in 2011 of alcohol poisoning, Wood found it too painful to even look at the images. Seven years on, he feels the time is right to showcase his collection of 150 unseen pictures.
Wood says: “There’s a false idea it was all bad during those years and it really wasn’t – I was there.
“This book, really it’s a love letter to a friend. And it’s a visual diary of us at the time when she was most celebrated by the world, but she was also really misunderstood.
“She was very much loved by the people around her and I hope this comes through.”
The snaps are in stark contrast to sad photos of Amy stumbling out of nightspots, drunk and dishevelled, barefoot and bleeding.
She and Wood spent many weeks on the island and he adds: “I had no interest in taking bad photos of her. Why take a photo of someone who’s struggling?”
■ Amy Winehouse, by Blake Wood and words from Nancy Jo Sales, is published by Taschen next month, priced £30.