Few rock'n'roll artists have more grasped the symbiotic link between music and image than David Bowie, who found the right creative collaborator in photographer Mick Rock. Rock went to a Bowie concert at Birmingham Town Hall in March 1972, commissioned by the London office of Rolling Stone magazine to shoot a photography story, and struck up an instant connection with the glam rock genius, just as he was metamorphosing into his Ziggy Stardust persona.

It paved the way for Rock's spectacular future, earning him the moniker "The Man Who Shot the 1970s."

Bowie's fame surged with the publication of his fifth studio album, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, in June 1972, and Rock became his personal photographer, capturing some of the best-remembered photographs of the unpredictable singer. The photograph of Bowie and guitarist Mick Ronson enjoying lunch on a train to Aberdeen, as well as the notoriously controversial "fellatio" portrait of the pair onstage at Oxford Town Hall, were among them.

"All David was trying to do – and he explained it to me many years later when we did the book Moonage Daydream – was bite the guitar," Rock later stated, possibly jokingly.

Bowie's pioneering magnetism lured other artists like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop into his circle, and Rock had unrivaled access to him ("I got him in his knickers, just camping around").

With his camera, Rock was always present. For the cover of his breakthrough solo album Transformer (1972), he photographed the iconic picture of a panda-eyed, wistful-looking Reed, and for Iggy and the Stooges' Raw Power LP, he captured the dramatic cover image of a bare-torsoed Pop (1973).

Rock's cover artwork for Queen II (1974) mimicked a photograph of Marlene Dietrich from the 1932 film Shanghai Express ("No one was ever more glam than the divine Ms Dietrich," Rock claimed), and Queen used it again in their 1975 video for Bohemian Rhapsody.

After touring with David Bowie in New York in 1972, Rock got more enamored with the city and settled there in 1977. He told interviewer Barney Hoskyns, "There's no doubt that New York was darker, more depraved than London." "Lou Reed took me to places in London you'd never find."

Rock eventually found himself shooting New York scene legends like the Ramones and Debbie Harry of Blondie, and he treasured his portrait of Mötley Crüe in a bubble bath ("the dirtiest, the naughtiest band of the 1980s, God bless 'em").

Rock avoided discussing his origins and background, saying, "I don't normally get into that because I don't think it's necessary," but it was widely assumed that he was born in Hammersmith, London, to Joan and David Rock, the latter a civil servant at the Ministry of Labour. In a 2017 interview with the website the Talks, Rock, on the other hand, cast a different spin on it.

He explained how he was born when his unhappy married mother had an affair with an American airman who afterwards returned to the United States. He claimed to have two birth certificates, one of which identified him as Michael Edward Chester Smith.

He attended the exclusive Emanuel school in Battersea as Michael Rock before receiving a scholarship to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he studied medieval and contemporary languages. He began experimenting with photography at Cambridge, when he purchased "a battered Pentax camera from a mate for 40 quid," and met local kid Syd Barrett, a founding member of Pink Floyd. Barrett was photographed by Rock for his debut solo album, The Madcap Laughs (1970), which featured a nude lady on the back cover, as well as the centerfold portrait for Pink Floyd's 1971 album Meddle.

Rock became engrossed in the lives of the musicians he shot, admitting that "by the end of the 1980s, early 1990s, my cocaine problem had completely out of hand." I was still able to shoot, but the rest of my life was a disaster." He married Pati after divorcing his first wife, Sheila (also a photographer) (who worked in real estate).

In 1996, he had quadruple bypass surgery and a kidney transplant, with the former manager of the Rolling Stones, Allen Klein, paying his medical bills, and he went on to have a professional renaissance. He was irritated by the label "Man Who Shot the 70s," believing it made him seem outdated, and he shot a slew of younger acts, including Snow Patrol, Snoop Dogg, Foo Fighters, Alicia Keys, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Janelle Monáe, Rufus Wainwright, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, and Pharrell Williams.

Aside from still photography, he collaborated with David Bowie on several memorable videos, including Life on Mars, John I'm Only Dancing, Jean Genie, and Space Oddity, and Bowie endorsed Rock's books Blood and Glitter: Glam – an Eyewitness Account (2001), Moonage Daydream: The Life and Times of Ziggy Stardust (2002), and The Rise of David Bowie 1972-1973. (2015). He has collaborated on books with Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, and Queen members Brian May and Roger Taylor, among others.

In Barney Clay's documentary SHOT! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock, Rock is highlighted (2016). On the films The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Shortbus, he served as the chief photographer.

Rock, a vivacious raconteur, said that his work was always motivated by appreciation for the artists with whom he collaborated. "They reminded me of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, and the Beats... I've been courteous because I care about these folks and consider myself to be their image protector."

Pati and their daughter Nathalie are his only survivors.

Thanks to Adam Sweeting at The Guardian whose reporting provided the original basis for this story.