DAVID Bowie is painting a black line down the middle of his lips in a mirror, back stage in Lewisham.

Mick Ronson is reflected in the mirror behind him in the candid snap of the realities of putting Ziggy Stardust on stage snapped by Roger Bamber.

The 71 year old photographer still cannot put down his camera but has been riffling through his negatives for memories of his years behind the scenes with Bowie.

Roger said: “It was a really fun time.

“That sort of stuff backstage never got used before but it was a great time to be a fly on the wall.

“Most of those pictures no one has ever seen. Most I hadn’t seen since I took them.

“It was incredible.”

Even when some people did not yet know what to think of the glittering and leotarded Ziggy Stardust, Roger was convinced.

“I though he was brilliant," he said.

“He was a very, very affable man.

“I went on a few tours with him. The whole thing is still in my memory and in these pictures.

“I got on very well with Mick Ronson the guitarist. At the Lewisham gig which must have been one of my earliest, I did all that stuff backstage.

“After the show had finished and I had finished my work I went to get my car.

“In those days I had a Lotus Cortina which I went around in, it was very sporty. It was a cream colour, no Ivory. And I used it that day.

“I went out after the show and there was no car. It had been stolen or pinched or something.

“I went back to the theatre – this was in the days well before mobile phones.

“I went back in and upstairs and found Mick in the dressing room.

“He said ‘ what you doing back here?’ And I said ‘someone’s stolen my car’.

“He said they were just wrapping up and so we went out and looked for my car in the tour bus. We went touring round Lewisham looking for my car with Mick Ronson and David Bowie in the top of the tour bus.

“We never did find my car.

“But they were such great fun to hang around with, such an affable crowd.

“I photographed David Bowie quite a few times on different tours and in his different guise and he was always such an easy person to get on with.

“I think that was the thing, we just got on."

Roger chanced upon his unique position as a fly on the wall of Bowie’s dressing room while working for The Sun newspaper.

After being hired as a hard news photographer he was sidelined to the pop desk.

“It was an exciting time. I worked at Live Aid and was the only Sun photographer at the front, another photographer was backstage.

“The Mirror had 20 photographers but The Sun only had two but I was right at the front, so close to all the action. "

Over the years he snapped all the latest pop bands, loving Mick Jagger, The Who, Jimmy Hendrix and Lou Reed but not meeting eye to eye with the Bay City Rollers.

Of all of Roger’s sensational subject, Bowie will always hold a space in his heart.

“I was doing a retrospective of my work and then David died.

“I started going into my archive and pulling out negatives.

“Some of the things he did then you couldn’t do now. He was up on stage in his pants.

“You couldn’t do that these days. That was the best thing about him. He was so personable.

“When I was doing the pop stuff for The Sun I used to pick out bands and pull them into the Page 3 studio which was down off Fleet Street.

“I used to just grab the bands and photograph them.

“But it was never like that with Bowie.

“It was always on tour or at gigs, it was always real. And I went with him like that for many years and through many changes.”

Roger’s very first encounter with the emerging legend happened much earlier when he was working as a photography tutor at Leicester College.

A student came in with a picture he had taken to be assessed.

He said: “It was a guy photographed by the bridge at Waterloo station looking down at the railway docks.

“It wasn’t a particularly good picture.

“But he said that was David Jones. That was before he became who he was.

“That was my first encounter of him."

Roger has now lived in Brighton for the best part of his life – after buying a cottage in Preston Park after a chance visit to the city in 1975.

He had been preparing for a retrospective exhibition of his work when he - like the rest of the world - heard last Monday that the icon had died at the age of 69 following a secret battle with cancer.

They had not spoken in more than 20 years, but Bowie became the focus of his exhibition.

It wasn’t about “cashing in” on the Starman’s legacy, Roger said, but "honouring the legend" and "showing the beautiful moment" they shared.

“I was incredibly sad,” Roger said.

“I just thought ‘what a loss to the music world and what a loss to humanity' because such a nice man has gone.

“I never heard anyone say a bad word about David Bowie. “

Roger’s exhibition Unseen Bowie is at the Eve Gallery, in Edenbridge, Kent from January 30 to February 19.

For more information visit www.evegallery.co.uk.