The iconic music photographer looks back on her time at Chris Blackwell’s legendary Compass Point Studios

Lynn Goldsmith is one of those rare people who seem to have done everything and met everyone – and got the pictures to prove it. Raised by one of the scientists who helped invent the jet engine and laser beam, she was given her first Box Brownie camera at the age of five and hasn’t stopped taking photos since.

Her portfolio boasts cover shoots for LIFE (Michael Jackson) and Rolling Stone (INXS, Sting, Springsteen), assignments for National Geographic and Sports Illustrated, hundreds of album covers (Al Green, Adam Ant, The Village People, Black Uhuru) and dozens of book jackets (Patti Smith, Rosanne Barr and, err, Judge Judy).

Not content with just being a photography heavyweight, she also became the youngest person to be inducted into the DGA (Director’s Guild of America), directed the first ever rock show on American TV and fronted the electro pop band Wills Powers, who are widely credited with creating the first ever-digital music video.

One of her favourite assignments took place at Compass Point Studios, the Nassau based recording compound set up by Island Records founder Chris Blackwell in the early 1980s. A frequent visitor to the Caribbean funk plant, she witnessed Grace Jones, Tom Tom Club, Talking Heads cut some of the songs that defined an era.

Here, she recalls what took her there and the story behind the photo of Grace JOnes and Marianne Faithful....