In October 1971, Pink Floyd set up inside the Roman amphitheatre at Pompeii and played to rows of empty stone seats. There was no crowd. The only people there were the band, their road crew and the film crew working for director Adrian Maben.
Jacques Boumendil was one of the camera operators on that film. The Rebel Lens holds 11 of his photographs from Pink Floyd at Pompeii, each available as a signature signed edition by Boumendil. Here's what happened over those four days, what the photographs show, and what to know before you buy one.
How Pink Floyd ended up at Pompeii
Pompeii wasn't the first idea. Maben originally pitched a film that played the band's music over paintings by René Magritte. The band turned it down.
The Pompeii idea came from an accident. On a trip to Naples, Maben lost his passport at Pompeii and went back to the amphitheatre. In the empty arena, he decided its silence and natural sounds would make a good backdrop for the music. Instead of a concert film with a crowd, he would film Pink Floyd alone in the ruins.
When was Pink Floyd at Pompeii filmed?
Pink Floyd filmed at the amphitheatre in Pompeii from 4 to 7 October 1971. The finished film, Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on 2 September 1972.
That gap is why you'll see both years attached to these images. 1971 is when the photographs were taken. 1972 is when audiences first saw the film.
Three songs were performed and filmed at Pompeii itself: "Echoes," "A Saucerful of Secrets" and "One of These Days." The rest of the film was shot in a Paris studio that December, including "Mademoiselle Nobs," the blues number featuring a howling dog.
Why there was no audience at Pompeii
Maben filmed the band playing live with no audience beyond the film crew. Instead of a crowd, the backdrop was an ancient Roman arena, and that's a large part of why the footage still looks like nothing else from the era.
It wasn't an easy setup. The site didn't have enough power to run the band's equipment, so the crew ran a cable of roughly 750 metres from the local town hall to get it working.
The band insisted on playing live. They brought their regular touring gear, and the sound was captured on a mobile 8-track recorder from Paris. Songs were recorded in sections and spliced together afterwards. "Echoes" is split into two parts in the film: Part 1 near the opening and Part 2 near the end.
The first footage shot wasn't a performance at all. It was a montage of the band walking around Boscoreale, near Pompeii, cut together with shots of volcanic mud.
The empty arena also changes how you should read the photographs. A typical concert photographer works from a pit, fighting for an angle over a crowd. At Pompeii there was no pit and no crowd. The people holding cameras were the people making the film.
Who is Jacques Boumendil?
Jacques Boumendil is a photographer born in Marseille in 1944. He was drawn to images early: at 12 he built his own lab in a cupboard in the family apartment, and at 18 he knocked on the door of DALMAS, a well-known press agency.
He is credited as one of four camera operators on Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, alongside Claude Agostini, Henri Czap and Gérard Hameline. That credit is what sets his Pompeii images apart from the stock and fan photos you'll find elsewhere: he was working inside the production, in the arena, during the shoot.
You can see everything we carry from him in Jacques Boumendil's photography collection.
The Pink Floyd at Pompeii photographs in the collection
The collection holds 11 photographs from the shoot. Most are close studies of one band member at a time:
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David Gilmour with his Fender guitar
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Nick Mason at the drums
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Roger Waters with his bass, plus a four-photograph series of Waters sold as Roger Waters Series 1 of 4 through 4 of 4
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Rick Wright, once at the piano and once at the Hammond organ
Two images show the band together: Pink Floyd walking at Pompeii, and the photograph that gives the collection its name, Pink Floyd, Live at Pompeii 1971.
If you're choosing between them, orientation matters more than people expect. The individual portraits of Gilmour, Mason, Waters and Wright at the Hammond are vertical. The band walking, Wright at the piano and the title photograph are horizontal, which suits a wider wall or a spot above a sofa or sideboard.
The Roger Waters series is the only set in the collection, and it's the one to consider if you want a group of images to hang together. Four vertical prints of the same subject, hung in a row, read as a sequence from the shoot rather than four separate pictures. If you'd rather have one image that stands for the whole film, the band walking or the title photograph are the ones that show Pink Floyd together.
How a signed print differs from a Pompeii stock photo
Search for Pink Floyd Pompeii photos and most of the results are stock libraries and social posts. Libraries like Alamy and Getty license images for publication. They're built for editors who need a picture for an article, not for someone who wants to own one. A stock license gives a publisher the right to reproduce an image. It doesn't give you a print, and it doesn't come with the photographer's signature.
A print from The Rebel Lens is a different object:
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It's digitally signed with a signed COA by the photographer. Each Rebel Lens Signature Edition carries the photographer’s digital signature and is accompanied by a signed Ace certificate of authenticity that documents the piece’s authenticity and provenance.
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It's made to last. Prints are produced either in the artist’s studio or directly by Rebel Lens using archival pigment inks and archival fine art papers, with consistent standards of quality and craftsmanship across every Signature Edition.
The same standards apply across our signed fine art photography prints, whoever the photographer is.
Additional sizes and editions are available upon request.
Print sizes and prices
Every Pompeii photograph is offered in three sizes:
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Size (inches) |
Price |
|---|---|
|
16 x 20 |
$695 |
|
20 x 30 |
$1,295 |
|
24 x 36 |
$1,995 |
16 x 20 works well for a single portrait in a hallway or office. At 24 x 36, a horizontal image like the band walking holds a whole wall on its own.
Pink Floyd at Pompeii since 1971
The film has been reworked several times since its 1972 premiere:
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1974: a re-release added footage of the band recording The Dark Side of the Moon at Abbey Road.
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2002: a director's cut came out on DVD, adding new footage of the Apollo space program.
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2016: Maben directed an exhibition, Pink Floyd - Live at Pompeii, inside the amphitheatre. That July, David Gilmour returned to the same arena and played two concerts, and was made an honorary citizen of Pompeii.
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2025: a frame-by-frame restoration, retitled Pink Floyd at Pompeii: MCMLXXII, played in cinemas in April. It came out on streaming, DVD and Blu-ray on 2 May 2025, with the soundtrack remixed by Steven Wilson and issued on vinyl and CD for the first time.
If the restoration is how you found your way here, these photographs are the same four days in October 1971, seen through a different camera.
For more from that era, browse our wider music photography collection, or see the work of Armando Gallo, who covered Pink Floyd's rise as London correspondent for CIAO 2001.
Pink Floyd at Pompeii FAQ
Was there an audience at Pink Floyd's Pompeii concert?
No. The band played to an empty amphitheatre. The only people there were the band, their road crew and the film crew.
When was Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii recorded?
The Pompeii performances were filmed from 4 to 7 October 1971. More footage was shot in Paris that December, and the film premiered in September 1972.
Who took the Pink Floyd at Pompeii photos at The Rebel Lens?
Jacques Boumendil, one of the four camera operators credited on the film.
Are the prints signed?
Yes. Each print is digitally signed with a signed COA by Boumendil at the time of editioning, and comes in three sizes starting at $695.
