Seven hundred Victorian hospital beds stretched across three miles of North Devon sand. Workers had spent six hours positioning each wrought iron frame by hand. Storm Thorgerson checked the light through his viewfinder. Then the rain came.
The pink floyd saunton beach photoshoot for “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” turned into one of rock photography’s most expensive disasters before it became one of its most iconic images. Thorgerson’s crew had to dismantle the entire installation, haul every bed back up the cliff, and wait two weeks to try again.
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A Lyric Becomes 700 Beds
David Gilmour sent Thorgerson the lyrics for “Yet Another Movie” in early 1987. One line stood out: “A vision of an empty bed.”
Most designers would have sketched a single bed in a surreal landscape. Thorgerson saw hundreds of them flowing across Saunton Sands like a river. He wanted Victorian wrought iron hospital beds. The kind used for patients in asylums. The kind that suggested dreams and madness.
The image matched the album title. A momentary lapse of reason. A temporary break from sanity. Thorgerson pitched the concept to Gilmour. The guitarist approved, though the budget would exceed $500,000.
The First Attempt Failed Spectacularly
June 14, 1987. Two trucks arrived at Saunton Sands carrying 700 beds rented from hospitals across England. Thorgerson hired 30 workers to move them.
Each bed weighed enough that it took two people to carry. The crew hauled them down the cliff path one by one, then arranged them in the flowing pattern Thorgerson had mapped out. Six hours of manual labor in the summer heat.
The beds formed a “riverbed” across the sand. Dogs were positioned near certain beds, referencing “The Dogs of War” from the album. A hang glider pilot prepared to fly overhead for “Learning to Fly.” Everything was ready.
Rain swept in from the Atlantic. Within minutes, visibility dropped to nothing. The shoot was impossible.
“We had to take all seven hundred and fifty back up the cliff, put them back in the lorry, wait two weeks, and do it again,” Thorgerson told Seconds magazine in 1998. “At that point, I wondered if I was stark raving mad.”
Why Thorgerson Refused Digital Shortcuts
By 1987, photo manipulation technology existed. Matte shots could have created the same image for a fraction of the cost. Thorgerson rejected that approach entirely.
He’d co-founded Hipgnosis in 1968 with a philosophy: build it real, photograph it real. The burning man on “Wish You Were Here” wore an actual flame-retardant suit. The cow on “Atom Heart Mother” stood in a real field. The beds on “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” would be real beds on a real beach.
“I wanted it to have a ‘My God!’ quality when you look at it,” Thorgerson explained to Gilmour during the second attempt. “Nobody’s going to believe we were this fucking stupid.”
The second shoot worked. Thorgerson got his aerial photographs from a helicopter and microlight. The image became the album cover.
The Album Behind the Chaos
Pink Floyd was fighting for survival when Thorgerson arranged those beds.
Roger Waters had left in 1985, declaring the band finished. Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason disagreed. Waters sued them in 1986 to stop them using the Pink Floyd name. The case dragged through courts while Gilmour recorded “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” on his houseboat studio, the Astoria, moored on the Thames.
Keyboardist Richard Wright rejoined during sessions but only as a paid session musician. Legal complications from his earlier departure prevented him from becoming a full member again.
The album became Gilmour’s statement that Pink Floyd could continue. It needed a cover that matched that ambition. Thorgerson hadn’t worked with the band since “Animals” in 1977. His return signaled a connection to Pink Floyd’s visual legacy.
Waters called the finished album “a pretty fair forgery.” The cover, at least, was undeniably real.
Saunton Sands: Three Miles of Film History
Thorgerson chose Saunton Sands for specific reasons. The beach stretches three miles along the North Devon coast within the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. The wide, flat expanse gave him room for 700 beds.
Pink Floyd had filmed there before. Scenes from “The Wall” depicting the Anzio landings were shot at Saunton in 1982. During World War II, American troops trained on the same sand for the D-Day landings. The dunes still contain concrete bunkers from that period.
The beach has hosted productions from the 1946 Powell and Pressburger film “A Matter of Life and Death” to Tom Cruise’s “Edge of Tomorrow” in 2014. The combination of dramatic coastline and practical access made it ideal for large-scale shoots.
The Cover’s Afterlife
“A Momentary Lapse of Reason” hit number three in the UK and US charts in September 1987. The album went quadruple platinum in America.
Thorgerson’s photograph became one of rock’s most recognized images. In 2025, activists recreated the bed installation at Saunton to protest wind farm cable routes across the beach. They titled their demonstration “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” and raised money by selling the beds afterward to charity.
The original photoshoot for the pink floyd saunton beach album cover proved Thorgerson’s point. Real photography, no matter how difficult or expensive, creates images that endure. Thirty-eight years later, people still can’t believe he was that stupid. Or that brilliant.
