Tina Turner Photos | Images and Photos of Tina Turner
Tina Turner is one of the most successful and well-known singers in history. She has had an incredibly long and successful career, starting in the late 1950’s. Over the years, she has won multiple awards, sold millions of records, and performed all over the world. Though now retired, her music has been a huge influence on other artists throughout the years and continues to be to this day. Photos of Tina Turner are considered to be some of the most iconic pop culture images of all time, and our featured in our photography gallery London.
Photos, Tina Turner Poses
How do you begin to sum the importance of someone such as Tina Turner? From humble beginnings to being inducted twice into the rock and roll hall of fame and selling over 100 million albums, at a time when racism, sexism and ageism were all against her. Turner came out on top; which is why she is so celebrated, a trip down YouTube memory lane of pop singer Tina concerts and you are left breathless with the energy radiated when Tina Turner performs. This raw energy and spirit is captured perfectly by TINA TURNER, "BEL AIR SEQUENCE REVISION 5-UP" by Norman Seeff in 1983.
"Working with Tina is like being exposed to a nuclear reactor. She exudes a primordial energy that comes from the muse of her creativity. I was shooting so fast to keep up with her that I blew my strobe. Tina just kept going and we got the most amazing footage on video. Every shot was stunning and at the end of the session, Tina asked me to dance with her. Well, she ‘danced me’....I felt as though I was teleporting! I used six images from the [Turner portrait session] to create a sequence for the iconic Hotel Bel Air in Los Angeles." -Norman Seeff
Norman Seeff was born 1939 and is world-renowned photographer who has studied the creative process and human creativity, with a core belief that we all can access the source of creativity in our own consciousness. He has worked taking photos for major labels in advertising including Apple and General Motors, as well as pop artist and artists alike; with names like Warhol, The Band, and Blondie to name few.
David Stetson is an photographer, born in the East End of London 1953. He went on to work in Beauty Fashion and Portraits, for many the leading tabloids and magazines in the late 70’s. He moved to New York and before leaving completed a post graduate course in film making.
He went on to receive high acclaim for his work with capturing portraits of global stars, such as Sophia Loren, Alfred Hitchcock & HRH Princess Diana. His photo work has been exhibited many times and displayed for gallery exhibition. His monochrome image of Tina Turner live on stage captures her gazing out to the audience, her trademark ‘best legs in rock and roll’ loosely covered by her split costume.
Tina Turner's life reads like an amazing story of rags to riches: what one person has accomplished against the odds puts Turner up there as an example to many. She is now retired and no longer performs live, and in previous interviews Turner has stated how the life of the performer before was “I was just tired of singing and making everybody happy,” she said. “That’s all I’d ever done in my life.” She has fully retired and seems to be living in bliss with her husband in a chateau over looking Lake Zurich in Switzerland. Turner told NYT Amanda Hess “I don’t sing. I don’t dance. I don’t dress up."
Her health over the last several years has taken a few setbacks. After Turner married Erwin Bach, she suffered a stroke, and had to learn how to walk again; then doctors discovered she had colon cancer, after which both of her kidneys failed. She didn’t want to live on dialysis and was ready to die, but her husband had other plan and stepped in, he didn’t want another partner and and resulting tests showed that he was 100% match as an organ donor. So he successfully gave her his kidney. The story between the two of them is a love story made from fairy tales. In the recent HBO documentary when discussing when they first met: “My heart went bah-boom,” she says. “It means that a soul has met, and my hands were shaking." Erwin stated in the documentary “It’s love, it’s something we both have for each other. I always refer to it as an electrical charge. I still have it. I still have it even though when I left her two hours ago, three hours ago, this morning, I still have that feeling. That feeling is still with me. It’s in my heart. I feel very warm about this.”
Tina Turner, the singer now on your Device
With the changes in the world in how we buy music and play it at home or from a mobile device, a number of artists have been noted at selling their rights to their music. Singer Tina Turner follows in the footsteps of Stevie Nicks, Blondie, Shakira, Dylan and Neil Young. This gives artists a lump sum of money and then the companies make money whenever the song is streamed.
Mark Savage the BBC Music Correspondent reported that BMG had done the deal with Turner, and even though the amount hasn’t been disclosed, industry experts estimate in the region $50 million (£37m) "Tina Turner's musical journey has inspired hundreds of millions of people around the world and continues to reach new audiences," said BMG boss Hartwig Masuch to the BBC "We are honoured to take on the job of managing Tina Turner's musical and commercial interests. It is a responsibility we take seriously and will pursue diligently. She is truly and simply, the best.”
With "TINA - The Tina Turner Musical" and the 2021 HBO documentary "Tina" interest in her music has surged, and BMG are intending to reach out to new audiences via social media.
Awards
Not many artist have celebrated the amount of success that American singer Tina Turner has achieved, as a solo artist at the age 44, 1984, her album Private Dancer spent 147 weeks in the UK album charts and 81 in the US. ‘What's love got to do with it’ on its own gained 3 Grammys. Over her career Turner received 12 Grammys and 5 Platinum albums. Nice. She held the record for the most attendees at a concert for a single person, 182,000 in Rio de Janeiro 1988, that tour alone she played to 4 million fans, 25 countries, 230 concerts. And of course don’t forget she sang the song Golden Eye on Pierce Brosnon bond movie of the same title. She has collaborated and performed with some of the best names in music, Lets dance - David Bowie, State of shock with Mick Jagger, It's only love with Bryan Adams, Proud Mary with Beyonce, Eros Ramazzotti - Cose Della Vita, she preformed numerous times with Elton John and Cher, the list is extensive here’s a few more - Sting, Barry White, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Bruce Willis, Rod Stewart and the list goes on.
In the 90’s Turner was awarded the Legend Award at both the Essence and World Music awards, she received the Légion d'Honneur from the French education minister. She ranked no.2 Greatest Woman in Rock and Roll.’ What's love got to do with it’ was voted by the public as one of the top 10 Grammy moments. Rolling Stone ranked Turner in the top 100 greatest singers of all time and No 63 in the greatest artist lists.
The 2000’s and the recognition still keeps coming: Tennessee state Route 19 was rename Tina Turner Highway. Rolling Stone ranked Proud Mary: The Best of Ike & Tina Turner in the 500 greatest albums of all time. In 2013 Turner appears as the oldest person ever to appear on the cover of a vogue magazine. ABC voted Turner no.2 in the greatest women in music. 2014 and she entered the Soul Music Hall of Fame, 2019 and its the Memphis Hall of Fame. 2021 and she is back in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (see Rock and Roll Photos). And I don’t even think covers everything, we haven’t even looked at any recognition deserved for her time with her first husband (Ike) and their time preforming as the ‘Ike and Tina Turner Revue’, and don’t forget Tina the musical, opening in 2018 in London, back on the stage after COVID19 postponed it, the first opening met with rave reviews from critics and audiences, nominated for three Laurence Olivier Awards, including Best Musical.
Also see our feature page on Michael Brennan Photography!
Childhood
Such an impressive array of awards and collaborations is stunning in itself but to help put it into perspective, to revise why Turner is an icon you need to go back to the beginning and see where she came from, where it all started. The Tina Turner Museum located at the West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center. The museum is actually her one-room schoolhouse, Flagg Grove School House, It was moved there to preserve it and when Turner found out she fully put her support behind the project, the school had been built by her great-great uncle in 1889. ‘Inside you’ll find a collection of her memorabilia, including costumes, gold records and even her high school yearbook. Saved and moved from Nutbush, a small farming community just outside of Brownsville, you’ll also experience what learning must have been like for African-American students in the 1940s through early ’60s’ - https://www.westtnheritage.com/tina-turner-museum.
Tina Turner American icon was born Anna Mae Bullock in 1939, the daughter of share croppers in Nutbush, Tennessee. Her childhood was tough - she was sent to live with strict grandparents due to her parents going to work at a defence facility during WW2. Her father was abusive to her mother who subsequently left when she was 11. By this time she had started singing at Nutbush's Spring Hill Baptist Church in the choir. When she was 13 her father remarried and left and she was sent to live her maternal grandmother. Her half sister and 2 cousins where killed in a motorcar accident when she was a young teenager. At age 16 her grandmother died and she was reunited with her mother in St Louis. She graduated from Sumner High School which was one of only two public high schools in St. Louis City for African-American students and was segregated - the Civil Rights Act wouldn't arrive until 1964.
Sonia Outlaw-Clark, director of both the West Tennessee Delta Heritage Center and the Tina Turner Museum spoke to LOLA OGUNNAIKE for Town and Country. https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a37678267/tina-turner-museum/ Outlaw-Clark calls Turner’s rise from the cotton fields of the rural South to the pinnacle of pop culture the quintessential “American dream story.” “If she can do that, anybody can do anything,” she says. “You just have to have that perseverance and that sense of who you want to be.”