After graduating from the London College of Printing (renamed from the London School of Printing and Graphic Arts) in 1963, While at
The Sunday Times, King also worked as a freelance graphic designer in the record business, designing covers for
The Who Sell Out,
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, and
Axis: Bold as Love. His design for the 1968
Jimi Hendrix album
Electric Ladyland generated controversy as it featured a
David Montgomery photograph of 19 nude women, which King intended as a contrast to the image of women found in
Playboy magazine. The photo was considered too risqué for the US edition of the album and was replaced by a picture of Hendrix. King, a self-taught photographer, additionally documented the training sessions of
Muhammad Ali before his
1974 match with
George Foreman. In 1975, the photographs were published in
I Am King: A Photographic Biography of Muhammad Ali. He also designed book covers for radical and progressive publishers, including
Allison and Busby and
Earthscan Publications, as well as for mainstream publishers, such as
Penguin Books. From 1979 to 1985, King was commissioned by
David Elliott, then-curator of the Museum of Modern Art Oxford (now
Modern Art Oxford), to design a series of catalogues and posters for the following Soviet art exhibitions:
Alexander Rodchenko,
Vladimir Mayakovsky: Twenty Years of Work, and
Art Into Production: Soviet Textiles, Fashion and Ceramics 1917–1935. This work would later be featured in the 2016 exhibit
David King: Designs for Oxford (1979–1985). King devoted his later career to uncovering and chronicling the art of the Soviet and the Constructivist periods, with a focus on the doctoring of photographs and the accompanying process of
historical revisionism. He published the result of his research in books, which include
The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia (1997),
Ordinary Citizens: The Victims of Stalin (2003), and
Red Star Over Russia: A Visual History of the Soviet Union From the Revolution to the Death of Stalin (2009). He also published a second book on Trotsky,
Trotsky: A Photographic Biography, in 1986. King’s book became the basis of an audiovisual collaboration with composer
Michael Nyman, who created a soundtrack to
The Commissar Vanishes, which was first performed at the
Barbican Centre, London, in 1999. King's collection grew to more than 250,000 items, which have formed the basis for a series of exhibitions and a special gallery in the
Tate Modern.
Stephen F. Cohen, a professor of
Russian studies, described King's work as "a one-man archaeological expedition into the lost world, the destroyed world, of the original Soviet leadership. He was determined to unearth everything that Stalin had buried so deeply and so bloodily." ==Death==