Proof

"Music is the greatest proof of the existence of God" --Kurt Vonnegut

If I ever gave up photography (sigh) I would try to become an architect. And even if managed to make it to the top of either of those fields creatively, I would give them both up, and my mother, to have musical talent. I love Vonnegut for many reasons, but it’s the above quote that reminds me of him most often. In this space right here I would write about how much music means to me, using several lofty adjectives, etc. But music is more than that; its too much to fit words around in my life. So, in short, I totally agree with you Kurt.

My education in serious photojournalism came with a rebirth of the importance of jazz in my life, and there is nothing coincidental about that. My photo essay professor showed our class that there was an intrinsic and indistinguishable line between music and photography, between passions all, and we spent time in class and at his apartment looking through photo books and listening... Perres and Rollins, Eggleston and Parker, Richards and Mingus. Sylvia Plachy acknowledges this connection as immediately as you can in her incredible Unguided Tour, which comes with a flexible Tom Waits lp in the back cover.

Music and photography, and modern art, literature, architecture, wood-block printing, graphic design, and fashion are the same; connected. And it’s always been my greatest ambition to create images that express what I feel when listening to Mingus, Radiohead, or Waits. Some day I hope.

And even though this connection is so strong, so deep as to seem strange to even mention it out loud (imagine a fashion show without music), photography has a hard time capturing the essence of music. There are recent spectacular failures on the tip of my tongue, none so iconically as Leibovitz's American Music (though I do love that portrait of Waits). But I've lately been thinking too about Nat Geo's most recent attempts to try and explore American music itself, just this year with Harvey's Hip-Hop Planet, and several years ago with Allard's Blues Highway. Two incredible photographers who I admire; two projects that were almost completely without music, and instead taken down an anthropologic path (which makes sense for NGS, but god damn) of explication, of definition via props and geography. Looking back on Allard's work just now, years later, I find a little more poetry there than I remember, but there is nothing bigger or deeper in the American arts than the Delta blues, and the standard has to be monumental.

For my own part I have nothing that even comes close. Nothing as raw and visceral and poignant and propped in anticipation on a melodic edge between trite and abstraction. I don't even have a good pop song, let alone something like JSBX's "Blues X Man." But I'm going to keep trying; I have to. I really want to find a way to create an essay of images which is melodic and infectious, loud and resounding, rooted and new, and capable of amplifying something deep within the viewer. Like so many of us, I want to keep the faith.

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Comments (7)

Goddamn beautiful. If only I could have one realization that is as deep as that. You are so much closer to creating the images that sing to you because you know what fuels you. So many people never find that. Shoot on.

awesome!
could you elaborate further on the spectacular failures? (Leibovitz's american music??)

The best photograpy work always comes from personal projects. I remeber you writing about project BS, I was with you on that one, but if you devote your time to work that truly interest you, rather than to your clients, the great stories will come. This has consequences though...
Your best work, by far, is Life after grammie. Just think about why.
But you know all of this...

Sid-
It's hard for me to really explain what I dislike so much about American Music, I just think its completely devoid of the very stuff that its supposed to be all about, and in its hollowness I find a really spectacular failure because of the giant risk of assuming such a sweeping and grandiose title. I respect Leibovitz's technique and polished product, but I don't feel any connection to the dozens of artists she illustrates, many of whom are heroes of mine.

Velibor-
You are definitely right there, and I agree with you 100%. Just like most everyone else, I'm always too concerned with paying my rent. The more depressing part that this discussion would lead is that after not allowing yourself the freedom to really put your energy and resources into your personal projects (whether that is a good or bad decision), you end up less able to produce the very work you love the most. I basically find myself having to relearn shooting essays for myself.

I see what you are saying..I havent seen the book but have felt this way about a lot of Lebovitz's other work...sometimes its just technique and production with no soul. Also, its a relief to realize that even portraitists like Leibovitz, Seliger are subject to human failings that we all share :)

John, it's a terrible frustration when trying to capture something so organic and fleeting as music. Just like a jazz musician could never play the same song the same way twice. It just doesn't happen because it's all in a moment. Photography cheats because it has the capacity to steal a moment - or at least what we perceive that moment to have been.

How do you create a photo essay with the melody of Ellington, or the tone and soul of Dexter Gordon or the virtuosity of Coltrane and the ambition of Miles? How about Monk's dissonance or even Radiohead's?

How do you like the Blue Note jazz photographs taken by Francis Wolf - http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Note-Photography-Francis-Wolff/dp/0789304937

Keep this going. I would love to see what you find.

-Sherman

Drinking with...thank you for this site that came up when I goggled "connection between photographers and music". I enjoyed your thoughts and images.

One of my photo mentors once mentioned that it seems that many good photographers are also good musicians, though it is not a consistent rule (a primary example is Ansel Adams, concert pianist and piano teacher turned photographer). In my case, the development of my photography and my music has taken a demonstrative parallel tract. Also in both areas there is in me an intense and strongly similar compulsion. Sometimes I crave making music, playing until my fingers cramp, singing until my voice is a rasp. Other times I'm driven to capture one of those special images that one want to hang on the wall and stare at for hours, to have peers rave and compliment. All this fuels my curiosity. What is this mysterious connection? Is there something in the writings of Oliver Sacks to lend insight? Is there a similar connection between music and painters, or music and graphic artists, or sculptors?

At this point I put on the brakes. "Educated" humans tend to be steeped in the need for causal explanations. It follows that there then is the need to discuss theories, to impress others with a brilliant insight. Even though one of these cocktail party intellects might not have originated some arcane epiphany, the burst of the brilliance is bound to rain down over him/her like the golden dandruff of reflected glory.

Comes to mind an intro to an art book I once read wherein the author apologized in advance for the inadequacy of words when it came to the subject of art. So where do these cross currents leave me? (By the way, apparently more area in the human brain is devoted to music than is language. This is from Oliver Sacks.)

Just this:

There does exist a connection. Ones far wiser than I have verify the phenomenon. I will search. I will be most interested in uncovering more examples and in particular hearing or reading the reflections of those so blessed. I will also be interested in revelations stemming from groundbreaking research in neuro-science, the current darling of both hard science and philosophy, particularly where it relates to the elusive subject of consciousness. Otherwise I think I'll defer on the categorical, the empirical, the linguistical, the logical explanations in favor of that which dwells in the mystic fog of the purely intuitive. Which will require a different and much more demanding search: I will strive to capture lyrical motion in my photographs and harmonic counterpoint and memorable imagery in my music.

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