The Sound of a Photograph
Several years ago, I went to an exhibition of old Polaroids. They were placed in grids on the wall and displayed in a reverse position showing only the captions handwritten on the backs of the photographs. There were also series of photographs that had lots of marginalia on them, requiring close inspection. It was a way of "exposing" a photograph with descriptive text only. This gave me the idea that one could actually stage a photo exhibition with just captions, perhaps with just blank white spaces, framed and matted. I am creating a variation on this idea on my latest album in the Music for Places series, Music For Photographs ("MFPV"), by composing music that suggests iconic (or just well-known) photographs. Essentially it is a scoring for stills, as Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills were contextualized by suggesting they were captured from pre-existing footage from films or TV. Like a film score, they are a 'still score'.
I once listened to an interview with artist and photographer Ed Ruscha by the late Peter Jennings where he said he thought the photographs of Walker Evans had an 'audio' to them. MFPV is an extension of this idea but uses through-composed music and even pop songs, not just field recording. (Also see/hear my Audio Snapshots).
The effect is interestingly like a Talbot photograph.
The title of this image is View of Sharingtons Tower at Lacock Abbey. If I were to create a piece of music for this I'd make it sound like it looks. In an abstract sense, it perhaps informed the idea of ambient music more than a century before it became a thing.
In the piece Saigon Street 1963, I am referencing an event that happened there in that year. I am also alluding to other iconic photos from the Vietnam War which you can envision in your mind as we all have seen them. Another piece has the title Standard Amarillo, 'staged' in Amarillo Texas.
What makes an iconic photo or sound?
What makes a photo iconic is largely determined by a generation or the passage of 20-30 years. For example, the Cartier-Bresson photo of the kissing couple is iconic because it has semiotic value with the end of World War II. But there were also jubilant kissing couples after every war, and photographers took pictures of them, but they are 'fungible' (the word of the year). Accordingly, older people don't always have all the context for iconic photos of the now. (Without searching 'Naked Athena' do you know that photo and the circumstances?)
[It's remarkable that search engines also now define what is iconic by popularity and rankings, which is more evidence that our lives are lived by the numbers. Apparently, Cartier-Bresson took lots of photos of people kissing--probably because he coached them. Also, if you search "Paris kissing" the results will include Cartier-Bresson and well as Brassai and others). Paris is the quintessential location for the part of the story or film where the relationship is new and going well, that goes south at some point. In terms of the film scoring, you know the cliches).
The iconization of photos has changed. What's happening now is that whenever there's some kind of an event, almost everybody (as well as surveillance cameras) is taking pictures of it. In 1946, not many people carried cameras around with them--and those that did were taking photography more seriously as an art form because it was something that was perhaps more revered then, or was a more rigorous endeavor. But I wonder if anybody is taking photography seriously to the extent that it was in the 1940s, or that "serious" has been redefined in some way. What we are serious about now is the virality of the image, and to take credit for it if we can. But that is almost impossible now just from the sheer fungibility of images.
One of the photographers that I wanted to feature on the album was Brassai, but I couldn't decide which photograph was iconic, as I feel that almost all his work is iconic in some way. I wouldn't want to misuse the word "iconic" as simply meaning that it is original--which is what I'm interested in. And I think his work certainly was--especially his low-light evening photographs, and the use of fog as a mood. But even in situations where fog may be present, it's now easy for anyone to just walk outside and take fog photographs (sans tripod) with a smartphone and share beautiful images. But they are just fungible imitations, because everybody has already seen them, and have perhaps taken them. What makes work original is how things which are already cliche are differentiated by things on the periphery--in my case, the use of sound. We also get a sense of place with Brassai. (Incidentally, Brassai is a pseudonym derived from Brassó, the Hungarian village where he was born).
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A short poll:
In your opinion, which of the following would be the iconic image for Brassai?:
Avenue de l'observatoire:
Le Ruisseau Serpente:
An example of a mis-iconization of a photograph is this recent "send-up' of the Abbey Road album cover, What the hell's an NFT? When I first saw it I was expecting it to ‘wink’, meaning the SNL cast members were in specific roles suggesting the Beatles, left-to-right, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Ringo, and John Lennon. Kate McKinnon looks like she might be Andy Warhol as George Harrison, but why? And what are the other characterizations? I also see it as a missed opportunity to be clever. I mean, if you're going to create a clever parody, why not do a little bit of research? Perhaps they did and it's not being shared.
Embodied Viewing
The way we used to look at photographs was in a physical space, printed on paper, matted, and framed. Looking at photographs was an "embodied" viewing of photographs in a physical space. Now there is no space around photographs, and the sound gives it space, as does the stereo field which we have grandfathered in as an idea of putting recorded music in a space, even though it is only in a flattened space. Surround-sound, and even binaural recording extends stereo but it is still a flat plane.
Takeaways:
Photography is about the context provided outside the frame and cultural frameworks.
A piece of art or music is a touchstone for a future context. In essence, it awaits unknown connections and circumstances that might occur in the future--with meanings that the original artist might not have realized. (For me it’s a musical context)
In many ways, vision is informed by language; knowing more about what to look for gives you greater 'insight'. Sometimes insight comes directly from metaphor as a way to frame something in such a way to see it differently and makes it easier to communicate. Art and music are 'frames' in this context.
Constraints are useful for limiting the options in a creative endeavor, and it can be a heuristic to reach a resolution, but ultimately the real Resolution includes the periphery and/or the place or context in which it is viewed, including its framing, all of which is essentially 'outside the box.' (Sound and/or music can be placed on the periphery).
All photographs have an edge, as does visual perception. Reality has a perpetually undefined edge. Technology, like a camera, provides a temporary framing of what is infinitely transmutable.