David Bowie

In Ashes to Ashes (1980), Bowie and co-director David Mallet created a strange visual world around a return to Major Tom. Bowie's Pierrot costume, designed by Natasha Korniloff, gives the familiar star another unstable identity rather than a straightforward portrait. Look at the contrast between his controlled gestures and the distorted landscapes around him. The video shows how a performer can make earlier characters part of an evolving mythology, with the image adding questions that the song leaves open.