A Brief History of Time - The Photo

If you were asked to picture Professor Stephen Hawking, there’s a good chance you’d actually be thinking about the portrait below shot by British-born photographer David Gamble.

THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT & ICONIC PHOTO EVER TAKEN, OF THE MOST ACCOMPLISHED THEORETICAL PHYSICIST OF OUR TIME.

Includes exclusive never released mp4 audio file of an uncut, 53 minute interview with photographer David Gamble embedded as an unlockable file for the NFT owner.

Cover of Hawking’s seminal work, “A Brief History of Time” & The first full page image ever printed in Time Magazine

The image, commissioned for Time in 1988, has become iconic, but few people know the story behind the photograph. How a smiling Hawking, surrounded by intriguing clues and objects, came to live eternally in that beautiful, off-kilter moment.

The Gambles were a musical family and David grew up drumming in rock bands, but two defining moments inspired his transition to photography: One year, a Kodak Instamatic appeared under the Christmas tree, and sometime later he stumbled across a magazine spread titled “The Art of Photography.” That was it. David began taking pictures of the world around him – especially local musicians. He was good enough to be invited on tour with them across Europe, but he instead enrolled in art school and dove into his formal training with the same discipline he once put into music.

Shakespeare wrote that greatness waits for no man, and Gamble was no exception. Before he even finished school, he earned one of five spots in a paid post-graduate photography program. This opened doors to professional commissions, including a gig with The Observer to shoot a West End stage actor named Adrian Mole.

When Time called in 1988 asking Gamble for a portrait of Stephen Hawking at home in Cambridge, he was already an established editorial and fine art photographer. Time was a copy-heavy publication that only gave photos one or two columns, but Gamble talked them into a full-page color image – unheard of at the time.

“When I arrived, Stephen was downstairs being treated by a nurse, who he hated,” Gamble remembers. “He needed to be fed by tube at regular intervals, which complicated our plans.” The pair headed to Hawking’s office with only a short window of time to build rapport and get the shot. “My brother was in a chair for a decade,” Gamble recalls, “so I knew how to be around and communicate with someone in Stephen’s position.” He got down to Hawking’s eyeline. By this time, the physicist’s motor neuron disease was rapidly advancing, forcing him to communicate by computer. “No moon, no Einstein, no music,” Hawking typed.

Gamble compromised and removed a piece of sheet music from the mise en scene, but Hawking’s chalkboard covered in notes and formulas caught his eye. In that moment, Gamble decided to place Hawking at the center of his own little universe and shoot at a low, off-kilter angle to create tension – a technique inspired by the 1949 Orson Wells film The Third Man.

Gamble’s camera setup at this time created both constraints and possibilities. First, he shot on transparency film, which is notorious for its narrow, unforgiving margins. “I had to carefully choose my camera settings,” he explains. “And I shot on transparency because the film had to be quickly scanned into a magazine layout.” In this pre-digital era, Gamble couldn’t pull the shutter hundreds of times to get the perfect shot. He took 15, maybe 20 shots total, and from those he’d send just one or two to the magazine – creative practices that simply no longer exist.

As Gamble scanned the office for more props, his eyes settled on an image of Einstein – an ever-present force in Hawking’s life. He hung it upside down, paying tribute to the way Hawking’s groundbreaking theories were upending our understanding of the universe. If you look closely at the final shot, a classic image of Isaac Newton peeks out from behind Hawking’s chair – a kind of easter egg for science fans. The earthrise poster, pulled from elsewhere in the room, became another element of intrigue for the viewer to meditate on.

In the final portrait, for which Gamble was paid just $250, Hawking cracks a broad smile – a fleeting moment for a man with little control over his own face. As with many creators, Gamble was initially unsatisfied with what he captured, but after it was published – in color, on a full page of Time magazine – Bantam Books asked to use the portrait on the dustjacket of A Brief History of Time, Hawking’s landmark first book.

A year later, the editors at Time submitted the photo for a Royal Press Award without telling Gamble. He won. From here, the image developed a life of its own, taking home international awards and eventually becoming part of the National Portrait Gallery in London along with five other portraits he shot. (Gamble’s picture of Neil deGrasse Tyson is held at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.)

Why is the image so iconic? Many reasons: The angle. The setting. The expression. But it was also a special time in Hawking’s life. “Stephen was still Stephen,” as Gamble puts it. Celebrated for sure, but not yet the household name and global icon he later became.

And as all great portraits do, it captured so much more than its subject.

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