Gered Mankovitz has taken some of the most enduring photographs in the history of rock. As an exhibition of his work runs at Nunnington Hall, the photographer tells CHARLES HUTCHINSON about how the Stones got him rolling.

CHAD And Jeremy never had a hit but they have their place in rock'n'roll history.

Indirectly thanks to Chad Stuart and Jeremy Clyde, two young actors who sang and played at a coffee bar, 18-year-old Gered Mankovitz got to photograph the Rolling Stones, resulting in some of the most iconic images in rock.

The album sleeve for Out Of Our Heads was the beginning of a two-year partnership as he became the Stones' official photographer for their legendary, record-breaking tour of America in 1965.

The Stones, and Chad And Jeremy too, feature in Rock Icons, an exhibition of Mankovitz photographs from the early 1960s to The Verve in the Nineties, on show at Nunnington Hall, near Helmsley until June 22.

The old hall walls have been turned into a portrait gallery, 56 images in all, among them Marianne Faithfull; the definitive Jimi Hendrix shot; Eric Clapton; the Small Faces; the very hairy Free; the notorious image of a teenage Kate Bush; Wham in their homo-erotic swimwear; the wraparound album sleeve for ABC's Lexicon Of Love; and Oasis in a 1994 black-and-white Stones pastiche.

Inevitably, the central focus is Gered's work with The Stones. Think of what you were doing at 18, and then imagine being in Gered's shoes photographing Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones at the dawn of the longest-running soap opera in rock.

Born in 1946 in Hampstead, London, Gered is the eldest son of novelist, playwright and screenwriter Wolf Mankovitz and psychoanalyst Ann Mankovitz. He may have left school at 15 with no formal qualifications, but he had a gift for photography, and celebrities did not faze him.

Through his father's work, he met Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, Tony Curtis and Charles Laughton - who told him off for playing his music too loud - while Peter Sellers introduced him to the Polaroid camera in 1958.

Serving his apprenticeship with Camera Press, by the age of 16 he had become the youngest photographer to have his photographs used in a West End theatre display board (for Fiorello at the Piccadilly Theatre).

Through the aforementioned Chad And Jeremy, he was introduced to Marianne Faithfull, and in turn Marianne's manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, who managed the Stones too.

"He particularly liked my picture of her in the pub, and so he asked me to photograph the Stones. The Stones! Marvellous! The doors had opened pretty quickly for me," Gered recalls.

It was the perfect marriage. "They all loved working with this young photographer, as being young was so much part of the movement. I was their age and I had this idea of how they should look, which married with their ideas.

"They were not hungry for fame for fame's sake but hungry because of their skills, their artistry, their talent, not like now when you can be famous for being stupid," he says. "It was the same with me. It had been instilled in me from the age of 15 by my father that I had to deliver the goods, so I was not this amateur kid with a camera but a young professional coming up with results."

Album sleeves ensued, as did press and publicity photos taken at home, in the studio, on tour, on stage and off, until the band broke off with Oldham in 1967.

Fond memories abide of a special bond.

"The problem for me now is that I'm not working with bands as early in their career as I did with the Stones, especially now in this celebrity culture we have. If I'm photographing someone well known, they have an established image and only allow you to film them how they want, so I prefer working with someone at the early point where their image is not formed, where you can create something together, with mutual trust, because the roots are in truth."

His most famous example of that since the Stones was his 1978 portrait of Kate Bush - the one with, there is no way round this, the protruding nipples - used by EMI as part of its publicity campaign for her breakthrough single, Wuthering Heights. Bush, now in her 40s, is said to be less than overjoyed with this lasting image of her teenage self.

"She was quite aware of how she looked at the time the picture was taken," says Gered. "I don't think it's a case of her not liking it but where this story started is that she resented the focus being on her sexuality, not on her voice.

"It was a beautiful picture of a beautiful girl but it did cause a great deal of fuss, as you forget that that degree of sexuality was not usually portrayed in a pop photograph 24 years ago, but I wanted to do photographs that people wanted to see again, as if they couldn't believe what they saw the first time, just as when they first heard Wuthering Heights, they wanted to hear it again as they couldn't believe the voice they'd just heard."

Gered considered taking new portraits of 100 of his most famous subjects to mark the 40 years since his first photo of Chad And Jeremy for their debut album, Yesterday's Gone, but yesterday's gone for him too.

"I began writing letters to them but then I realised it would be exploitative because people would say 'Oh, look at Kate Bush now, she was so beautiful back then', and I felt it would have been interpreted in the wrong way," he says.

"I've been very lucky to have photographed these people and contributed to their story, and I would rather work with a new singer and create a new icon, rather than try to re-create an old icon.

"I'm happy to re-live my old work but to go back and do photographs of those who have survived, I'm not interested in that - though I would like to do the Stones as they still look so wonderful and it would be a great bookend to my career. But even then I don't think it would have the charm or the excitement of working with them in the Sixties."

At 56, Gered is no longer photographing rock and pop performers with his old regularity. His age, his pop history, who knows why.

"I'm not one of those celebrity photographers, I never set out to be that, but what does seem to happen is my reputation stops people from asking me. Maybe they assume I will be uninterested, or unavailable or too expensive, none of which is true, but that's just the way it is," says Gered, who did nevertheless photograph the Buena Vista Social Club veterans last year.

His archive work keeps him busy, and even now the Stones can bring him joy. "Last year someone found the negative for the Out Of Our Heads LP cover. It was from the very first session I did with them, so it was very crucial to me in every possible way, but the negatives had been lost through the record company the year they were taken," he says.

"I was jolly lucky that the fellow who found them was a long-standing acquaintance, so he returned them to me."

A new print of that Out Of Our Heads picture now forms part of the Rock Icons show: history restored.

Gered Mankowitz, Rock Icons, Nunnington Hall, near Helmsley, until June 22. Normal opening times and admission charges apply; ring 01439 748283. Original images (£175 to £1,325 framed), a special edition screen-printed exhibition poster (£25, £30 framed) and gift cards are for sale. This touring exhibition is presented in association with the Richard Goodall Gallery, Manchester.

Question: What is Gered Mankovitz's favourite Rolling Stones number?

Answer: "It has to be Get Off My Cloud. It was the number one single when I toured America with the band in 1965 and always brings back such great memories!"

Updated: 09:22 Saturday, May 31, 2003