Peter Rowen: From U2 “Boy” Wonder to Picture Perfect

July 12, 11:48 AMU2 ExaminerJill Marino

Peter Rowen: The "Boy" who went to "War" is now taking his own pictures!

Photo: Peter Rowen

If you’re a U2 fan, you know Peter Rowen already and might not even know it. He has stared back at you as you have stared back at him. When you want to hear songs like “I Will Follow” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, you reach for him. His youthful face, soulful stare, and powerful presence have stayed with you as a U2 fan through the years.

So who is Peter Rowen? He is the boy of U2’s “Boy” album. He is the war child of their “War” record. His is the face that U2 fans have felt an instant connection to as they play those brilliant works. Decades later, Rowen, 36, is now working behind the camera as a commercial photographer in Dublin. His portfolio consists of sports/editorial features, advertising campaigns, wedding photos, and also concerts featuring a certain group of Irish rockers.

Working with U2 never made him consider a career in music, but Rowen had a bit of a showman streak in him growing up. “I love music and I loved performing as a kid,” he says via email, “I used to sing for my aunties and uncles.”

As a child, Rowen found his future passion in photography through art. “My brother Jonny, who’s two years older than me, and I used to draw a lot together,” he says, “I realized as an adult that when I was a child I was far more interested in looking at pictures than I was in reading words.”

Excelling in art classes in school only fueled his interest more, and once he was a teenager, Rowen was on the road to photography. “I just got a camera at 17 and started taking pictures. I liked it so much that within a year I was working as an assistant photographer,” he says.

Rowen recently shot his brother Guggi’s second art exhibit at the Yoshii Gallery in New York City. “I like photographing interesting people. I think my brother’s a good subject,” he says, “As for the shots themselves, as always I try to just keep it very simple. I use natural light as often as I can… I guess I always try to tell a little about someone when I go to shoot them and the space that they work in.”

His brother’s role as an artist does have an impact on his job as a photographer. “We’ve discussed photography and art a fair bit,” Rowen says, “He’s certainly got a good understanding of composition and light so he knows exactly what he likes in a photograph.”

Guggi has been friends with Bono since their school days and remain close to this day. Rowen remembers that Bono “used to spend a fair bit of time in our house when we were neighbors”. Bono would eventually bring future wife Ali over for a Sunday dinner. As for the rest of U2, Rowen says that there is one occasion that stands out.

“The whole band called out to our house along with the photographer Anton Corbijn to shoot me along with the band,” he reflects, and jokingly adds, “I got that picture on my sitting room wall right now in fact!”

Now that he’s an established photographer, could Rowen look back at his own images on those epic album covers and see how successful U2 would eventually become? “I don’t think anyone could have predicted how massive U2 were going to be,” he says.

When he remembers the album shoots, he still sees himself as just a kid having fun. “All I knew was I had a day off school and I was being fed as much chocolate as I could eat,” says Rowen, “Did I think I was going to be part of something so special? No.”

As for the popularity that comes from being on the records, Rowen takes it all in stride. “I’ve never been recognized on the street, but I’ve certainly had lots of emails, phone calls, contact from journalists and all that sort of stuff,” he says, “It’s been happening since I was a kid so I’m used to it now.”

Rowen and U2 haven’t parted ways as the years passed. He took photographs of the band during their incredible homecoming show at Ireland’s Slane Castle in 2001. “It was pretty special,” he says. Rowen also shot the band during their stint at Croke Park last July during their “360” tour and plans on taking photos at some of the “360” European concerts this summer.

While he will forever be associated with two of U2’s classic works from the 1980s, it’s the band’s later material that Rowen is fond of. “I think my favorite album would be [1991’s] ‘Achtung Baby’”, he says. However, U2’s latest effort “No Line on the Horizon” is “great”.

Indeed, because of his work with U2 as the subject of his photos as well as his own experience of being shot for their albums, Rowen sees why music and photography blend so well. “I guess it’s all about the senses. We hear music, we see pictures,” he says, “Then there’s the emotion. Music has an amazing way of taking you back to a place or moment in time. I think pictures can do this to an extent.”

From once being the photo subject to now doing his own shooting, Rowen doesn’t like to sweat the small stuff when it comes to his work. “I like simple images, nothing too contrived,” he reveals, “I love when a picture has a certain amount of mystery, maybe just a look in someone’s eyes or a scene when you’re not quite sure what’s going on.”

Working with photos has introduced him to subjects he’s very fond of, like motorcycles. “I’ve started shooting a lot of bike racing lately," he says, "I love trying to capture the speed, the rush, the tension.” His love of music and capturing people is never far, and one of his photographic goals involves the biggest band on the planet.

“I’d love to shoot a behind-the-scenes type thing on U2,” Rowen says, “I don’t think it’s going to happen but that would be one story I’d love to do.” While that project is on hold, he never turns down the idea of shooting events as they are occurring. “I’m very drawn to documentary photographing. There’s something magical about capturing real moments in time, real events.”

Rowen would like his future photos to be of historical significance. “Moments in time that have lasting, memorable effects,” he says. Looking at the covers of “Boy” and “War”, Rowen has already cemented his own place in musical history in a memorable way.

Visit Peter Rowen’s website www.peterrowen.com. Find him on Facebook and Twitter- @u2boypeterrowen. To reach his promoter Karen Mayfield, find her on Twitter @KarenMayfield.

Meet U2’s ‘War’ child

By PETER ROBERTSON

To millions of U2 fans, Peter Rowen is the child whose mournful face stares out from the covers of “Boy” and “War.” Now, 30 years since he modeled for the iconic images, he still attracts attention.

Peter grew up in Dublin, where his older brother Guggi befriended Bono, when he was still known as Paul Hewson.

“Bono [came] over to our house quite a bit,” Rowen says. “My eldest brother, Clive, says Bono used to eat us out of jam sandwiches! I remember Bono and [his wife] Ali coming, much later, for Sunday dinner.”

U2 first had Rowen photographed in 1979 for the EP “Three.” He later appeared on the European version of “Boy” and the breakthrough third album, 1983’s “War.”

Peter Rowen in 1983 and now (inset).

 

“For the ‘War’ shoot, I went to photographer Ian Finlay’s house in Dun Laoghaire [a seaside suburb of Dublin], where his wife made soup, which I didn’t like. When we returned to town, Bono was driving and came close to running into the back of another car!

“One of my older brothers who lived in London at the time said he thought it was cool to see posters of me everywhere. I’d get phone calls from girls in America. How they got my family’s number, I don’t know.”

When he was 21, Rowen became a photographer. In 2001, a newspaper asked him to cover a U2 concert at Slane Castle.

“I was in the pit with all the press photographers. The band wouldn’t have known I was there. At one point, Bono was lying on the stage right in front of me, which was kinda funny. Not long later, I bumped into The Edge at a nightclub and told him about that assignment. He asked to see some of the pictures and, after doing so, sent me a note saying they were really good.

“The [band is] well aware I was the child in their photos, but it’s [never] cropped up in conversation. The connection I had with them was when I was a child. I know them to say hi and they are always nice to me. They’re older than me, so I would never have hung around with them.

“Some of my brothers and friends have got more mileage out of it than I ever have. The biggest buzz I get out of it is having my 10-year-old daughter thinking it’s cool.

“The funny thing is, I never used it for pulling the birds. I would have felt an idiot trying to use it as a chat-up line. It’s a bit cringey, you know: ‘I was on the U2 album covers.’ ‘Were you? So what!’

“Technically, they’re very simple pictures, but they’re powerful. What’s important about a picture is atmosphere and feeling. I gather the whole idea of “Boy” was the innocence of youth. “War” shows a much more disturbed-looking child, and I guess shows what the world can do to a child — a loss of innocence.”