A few days ago, Bob Hewitt reached out to me with exciting news: Keri Pitt, the wife of his dear late friend and fellow photographer Jeff Pitt, had discovered a batch of colour negatives featuring Rory, taken by Jeff. As Bob shared on his Facebook page:

“Jeff was a great friend and colleague of mine for many years – but sadly he passed away in 2017. Jeff was a larger than life character – if he hadn’t been a professional photographer… he could have been a stand up comedian – he always filled a room with laughter.”

Keri passed the negatives along to Bob, who carefully restored them. Initially, Bob had hoped theywere from Rory’s gig at Rhyl Marina in 1992, but they turned out to be from Rory’s performance at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool. on this very day in 1988! As Bob explained:

I believe these superb colour images are from when Jeff accompanied me to one of Rory’s shows in Liverpool in 1988. I was shooting black & white – and didn’t realise until now, that Jeff was using colour film. Personally, I rarely used colour negative film when photographing concerts – because magazines wanted either B&W or colour transparency… so these photos I’ve scanned are quite a rarity.

Bob has graciously given me permission to share these previously unseen and unpublished images with you all. He added:

I hope you enjoy these previously unseen/unpublished photographs by Jeff… he’d be thrilled to know they were appreciated by fans of Rory – and it’s been an honour for me to be able to bring them back to life via my superb #EpsonScanner V500 Perfection.

Since then, Keri has also uncovered Jeff’s black-and-white negatives from Rhyl. It will take some time to scan and restore them in Photoshop, but I hope to share them with you soon as well.

So, without further ado, here are Jeff Pitt’s incredible photos of Rory (click to enlarge).