The Garden, a PJ Harvey Discussion Site

Working for four decades [Tony Mott] has seen many musicians grow up through his camera lens ... in particular, PJ Harvey. Citing her in his “top five artists of all time”, he remembers seeing the transformation from girl with a “massive Gibson guitar” at Glastonbury to the woman owning the same stage three years later in a tight pink jumpsuit, completely in control of the performance and the image.

“She irons her hair, so it’s not naturally straight. And for whatever reason, one Big Day Out we had to do a shoot in Auckland and her hair was all curly and she was quite self-conscious about it. And she just said to me, ‘How does it look?’ And I was literally about to give her this big hype – ‘it looks great, you look fantastic’ – when this guy who was driving past us in an ambulance was so enraptured by her he drove it into a fence.”