The Celebration Tour – the 5th Madonna photobook by Neil Symons
After the success of his previous photobooks commemorating Sticky & Sweet Tours in 2008 and 2009, MDNA Tour and Rebel Heart Tour, Neil Symons is proud to release The Celebration Tour photobook – containing 440 pages of photographs taken from the 50 shows Neil attended during 2003 and 2004.
As soon as the tour was announced, I started being asked by fans across the world if there would be ‘another book’ – which was as flattering as it was scary! My first Madonna photobooks from Drowned World through to Confessions had been made purely for myself and my friends – but after the Sticky & Sweet books and the advent of social media, word spread and by the time the Rebel Heart Tour book came out, we sold 250 copies in the first hour alone.
Despite the success of the books, Neil has never made a penny of profit on them.
The cost that people pay is paid direct to the manufacturer & is purely for the production of the book. My purpose of making these books is to give fans something they can keep and remember the show as they saw it.
Neil first starting photographing Madonna’s shows during the Drowned World Tour.
There was limited internet back then and newspapers only featured a small number of photographs. I remembered when I was a kid and the Starblitz Madonna specials we would go on sale in newsagents that long time fans will remember. They would contain pages and pages of photos from dates on her Who’s That Girl and Blond Ambition tours. All the costumes would be captured, dance routines would be shot – they were a true record of the show but by the Girlie Show they weren’t released anymore. So when I booked to see so many Drowned World Tour across Europe I wanted to replicate the Starblitz publications for myself. I bought myself a camera and taught myself how to use it as I went. Ten shows into the Drowned World Tour I’d started to get the hang of it and I’ve never looked back.
After making a couple of magazine style publications for himself for Drowned World, Confessions & Reinvention, it was Sticky & Sweet where Neil produced his first full hardback book of photos.
I built up such a body of images during Sticky & Sweet – from different vantage points in the stadiums – and realised I could retell the story of the songs and performances. Those first 2 books for the 2008 and 2009 tours set the tone for the later books where I would try to simply capture the stories Madonna was telling.
Unfortunately Neil was taken ill during the Celebration Tour, missing 20 shows he had booked to receive hospital treatment for some serious conditions.
I was scared for my life during that period, and for the jobs I hadn’t finished – this book being one of them. I had enough photos to capture the tour by the time I was admitted to hospital but not to tell the story. Some of my friends jumped in to contribute their photos, which has meant that as well as the 50 shows I attended, the other 31 are represented in this book – meaning there’s at least one photo from every tour date included.
There were so many of his own photos that Neil wanted to include but ran out of space for.
I didnt want to pack the book with collages of tiny photos. I wanted to let the images of Madonna breath and take their space. So I’ll be releasing a companion volume for this book shortly called Celebration Tour : Encore for fans who can’t get enough and want another collection of photos.
This book contains the most beautiful photos of Madonna I’ve ever taken. Looking at them in isolation brings me joy – looking at them taking into account both she, and I, had life altering health scares before / during the tour makes this collection of photos take on even more special meaning for me.
The Celebration Tour Photobook will be released on 6th November and is only available from Blurb – watch out for Blurb discount codes offered on their website.
