From Ziggy Stardust to Blackstar: David Bowie's career in pictures

David Robert Jones was born in 1947. To avoid confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees, he chose the name Bowie, inspired by the Bowie fighting knife. His earliest hit, "Space Oddity," was released in 1969, just five days before Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. It introduced a fictional astronaut called Major Tom, a character which would reappear throughout Bowie's career.

A series of personae would follow Major Tom. Bowie's most famous and iconic one, Ziggy Stardust, appeared for the first time in 1972. Ziggy was an androgynous alien rock star who served as a messenger for extraterrestrial beings. His dyed red hair and striking costumes had a punk glam-rock edge. Bowie said he tried to achieve "a one-man revolution" with his alter-ego: Many would agree he did.

A new Bowie persona was introduced in 1976, with the album "Station to Station," called the Thin White Duke. The red hair and the makeup were gone, and the eccentric glam suits were replaced by stylish, more conventional suits. But despite the more "normal" appearance, Bowie's personality was affected by the massive amounts of cocaine he was consuming at the time.

This 1976 science-fiction film is about an alien who crashes on Earth. It was the first film in which David Bowie starred and there is still a cult surrounding the movie thanks to Bowie's performance, along with its surreal imagery. Bowie said he felt as alienated as the character he was depicting because of his extreme cocaine abuse at the time.

To get away from the drug scene in Los Angeles, David Bowie moved to West Berlin by the end of 1976. Living in a district with a strong Turkish community, Schöneberg, Bowie felt Berlin "was one of the few cities where I could move around in virtual anonymity. I was going broke; it was cheap to live. For some reason, Berliners just didn't care," he once told the magazine "Uncut."

From 1976 to 1979, he created his "Berlin trilogy," three albums which include the influential "Low" (1977), co-produced by Brian Eno and Tony Visconti. This album radically departed from his usual songwriting to experiment with avant-garde music. Sharing an apartment with Iggy Pop, Bowie also contributed to his albums, "The Idiot" and "Lust for Life."

The German film "Christiane F." from 1981 tells the story of a teenager who becomes a drug addict and a prostitute in the seedy Bahnhof Zoo area in West Berlin. David Bowie appears in the film, when the 12-year-old Christiane sneaks out to see him in concert. The film (and the non-fiction book it is based on) both acquired cult status - Bowie's soundtrack certainly boosted its success.

Bowie will also be remembered by many children of the 80s as Jareth, the Goblin King, in the 1986 fantasy film "Labyrinth." Directed by Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets, and produced by George Lucas, most of the characters in the film were played by puppets.

Confounding all Ziggy Stardust fans, Bowie turned up once again with another radical style shift in the 80s, surfing on the New Wave. He teamed up with Queen for the hit single "Under Pressure" in 1981 and his commercially greatest hit of the decade was "Let's Dance" from 1983.

Bowie kept reinventing himself throughout the rest of his career, reuniting for example with Brian Eno in 1995 for the concept album "Outside," which put back his musical genius in the spotlight. In 2013, he released a single for his 66th birthday called "Where Are We Now?" in which he contemplates his Berlin years.

He celebrated his 69th birthday on January 8, 2016 with the release of another album acclaimed by the critics, "Blackstar." Through his death two days later on January 10, the world discovered that Bowie had spent the last 18 months fighting cancer. "Blackstar" testifies one last time to his perpetual reinvention and musical genius.