Snaps: The Studio tour, 1979

I’d been hoping that Malcolm Whitehead’s Snaps might be made public eventually, and here it is, a 25-minute film documenting the northern end of a British book-signing tour undertaken by three artists and their publisher in October 1979. Not only that, there’s also this shorter compilation of footage that didn’t make the final cut. The artists were three of the four whose work is showcased in the book known as The Studio: Jeffrey Catherine Jones, Mike Kaluta and Bernie Wrightson. The other member of the quartet, Barry Windsor-Smith, either missed the jaunt to Leeds and Manchester or avoided the tour altogether. The publisher was fellow artist Roger Dean whose success in 1975 with his own art book, Views, prompted him to turn his self-publishing imprint, Dragon’s Dream, into a bona fide publishing company. Views was followed by a short run of art books by prominent fantasy and science-fiction illustrators including Chris Foss, Ian Miller, Bruce Pennington and Syd Mead. The Studio was…