He looked like he was winning. That’s the first thing everyone noticed when the last photo of David Bowie hit the internet.
On January 8, 2016, the world celebrated his 69th birthday. We also got Blackstar, an album that felt like a transmission from another galaxy. To mark the day, his official Instagram posted a shot of him grinning, wearing a sharp Thom Browne suit and a fedora. He looked dapper. He looked healthy. He looked like David Bowie always looked: completely in control of the room.
Two days later, he was gone.
The shock was absolute. Because of that photo, fans didn't see it coming. It created this image of a man who had somehow cheated time, right up until the moment he didn't. But like most things in Bowie's life, there’s a layer of performance to that image that most people completely miss. If you want to understand what those final days were actually like, you have to look past the suit.
The Story Behind the Famous "Birthday" Portrait
The photo everyone calls the last photo of David Bowie wasn't actually taken on his birthday.
It was a promotional shot captured by his longtime photographer, Jimmy King. King had been in Bowie's inner circle for years, the kind of person David trusted when he didn't want the world to see the cracks. While it was released on January 8, 2016, research into the shoot's logistics suggests it was likely taken a few months earlier, around September 2015.
They were near a film studio in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Bowie was there to film the music video for the title track "Blackstar."
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Why that smile was a performance
Bowie was a master of the "mask." By the time Jimmy King took those photos, David had been battling liver cancer for roughly 15 months. He knew his diagnosis was terminal. He had already suffered several heart attacks during the recording of the album.
Yet, in that photo, he’s laughing.
It wasn't a fake smile, but it was a chosen one. He wanted the final image of himself in the public eye to be one of vitality. He was "the man who fell to Earth," and he wasn't going to let a hospital gown be his final costume.
What the public actually saw last
If the Jimmy King photos were a curated farewell, his appearance at the premiere of his musical, Lazarus, was the reality.
That event took place on December 7, 2015, at the New York Theatre Workshop. This was his true final public appearance. If you look at the candid paparazzi shots from that night, the "vibrant" man from the birthday photo is harder to find. He’s still stylish, sure. But he looks thin. He looks tired.
The director of the play, Ivo van Hove, later shared that Bowie collapsed from exhaustion behind the scenes that night.
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"I could see the tears behind his eyes," van Hove told reporters after Bowie's death. "He was not a man to show off his emotions, but he was struggling."
Despite the physical toll, Bowie insisted on being there. He spent 15 to 20 minutes backstage talking about his excitement for the project. He was even talking about a second play. He was working until the machine simply stopped running.
The "Lazarus" video: A literal last image
If we are talking about the very last time David Bowie was captured on film, we have to talk about the "Lazarus" music video.
It was filmed in November 2015.
In it, Bowie is lying in a hospital bed, eyes bandaged with buttons sewn over them. It’s harrowing. It’s a direct confrontation with his own mortality. Johan Renck, the video's director, mentioned that it was during the week of this shoot that Bowie was told his cancer was terminal and treatments would stop.
The video ends with Bowie retreating into a dark wardrobe. He’s wearing the same striped suit he wore on the back cover of Station to Station forty years earlier.
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It's a haunting bookend to a career built on reinvention.
Why the last photo of David Bowie still haunts us
There's a weird comfort in that Jimmy King photo. We want to believe that he went out laughing.
But the truth is more complex. Bowie spent his last 18 months in a race against his own body. He hid his illness from almost everyone—even some of the musicians playing on Blackstar didn't know how sick he was.
He didn't want the album to be "the cancer record." He wanted it to be art.
By releasing that cheerful photo on his birthday, he successfully controlled the narrative one last time. He gave the fans a version of himself that was happy and "corker" (his own word for the album). It was a gift of sorts—a way to say goodbye without the pity.
Actionable insights for fans and collectors
If you're looking to dive deeper into this final era, don't just stop at the photos.
- Watch the documentary: David Bowie: The Last Five Years (HBO/BBC) gives the most factual account of his health and creative process during the Jimmy King shoots.
- Study the lyrics: "Lazarus" and "I Can't Give Everything Away" are literally his final words on his condition.
- Visit the locations: The Greenpoint entrance where the King photos were taken (520 Kingsland Avenue) has become a quiet site of pilgrimage for fans in New York.
- Distinguish the timeline: Remember that the "happy" photo is a promo shot from autumn 2015, while the Lazarus premiere in December is the most accurate depiction of his final weeks.
Bowie once said that "aging is an extraordinary process where you become the person you always should have been." In that last photo of David Bowie, whether it was taken two days or four months before his death, he looked exactly like the man he spent fifty years becoming: a legend who knew exactly when to take a bow.
To truly honor his legacy, spend time with the Blackstar liner notes. The artwork, designed by Jonathan Barnbrook, contains "hidden" features—like a galaxy of stars that appears when you hold the vinyl gatefold up to the light—that serve as a final, physical interaction between the artist and his audience.