Photographer: Sam Shere | Designer: George Hardie During the band’s 1970 Scandinavian tour, aristocrat Eva Von Zeppelin (a relative of the creator of the Zeppelin aircraft) threatened legal action and the band were forced to play in Copenhagen under the pseudonym of The Nobs. Though it represents one of the best Led Zeppelin album covers, the artwork also attracted some controversy. This was taken by Jimmy Page’s former Yardbirds bandmate Chris Dreja, who pursued a career in photography after The Yardbirds split in 1968. Atypically, the album’s back cover actually carried a traditional group shot of the band. Though based upon Sam Shere’s famous photograph of the 1937 Hindenburg airship disaster, the image was treated by Hardie, who rendered the original black-and-white photograph in ink using a Rapidograph technical pen and a mezzotint technique. Led Zeppelin’s longtime collaboration with illustrator and graphic designer George Hardie began with the iconic sleeve housing their debut album. The enigma factor again worked in the design team’s favour with Presence: cementing its place among the best Led Zeppelin album covers, Hipgnosis and Hardie were nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Album Package in 1977. The girl on the back cover photo was Samantha Gates, who had previously appeared with her brother on the band’s Houses Of The Holy artwork.
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The artwork’s inner sleeve photographs, meanwhile, were sourced from a variety of archive stock pictures, and were put together as if designed for a feature in National Geographic magazine. The background in the cover photograph was an artificial marina, installed in London’s Earls Court arena for the annual Boat Show, in the winter of 1974-1975. Thorgerson later elaborated further on the concept by saying that it represented the power of Led Zeppelin, as their music was “so powerful, they didn’t need to be there”. However, according to Hipgnosis’ Storm Thorgerson – who designed the cover along with George Hardie – “The Object” was intended to represent Zeppelin’s “force and presence”. Many fans still believe the curious black obelisk-shaped object Led Zeppelin used for the cover of Presence (referred to simply as “The Object”) was a spoof on the monolith from Stanley Kubrick’s influential 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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