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| "I
merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues." - Duke Ellington |
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"What we play
is life."
- Louis Armstrong |
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| IMPACT | HANDS
| PORTRAITS | VOICE | RICK
| MASTERS | INSTRUMENTS |
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| ARTIST'S STATEMENT - INSIDE THE MUSIC |
I began photographing musicians several years ago when I was first looking to discover my
own voice in photography. While experimenting with architecture, still life, sunsets, and
other 'traditional' subjects of most fine-art photographers, I was uneasily aware that
something was missing. |
| Oh, I could take perfectly
acceptable pictures. But I didn't always fully relate to them, didn't connect with them.
In general, they didn't speak to me, so I knew they wouldn't mean anything to anyone else
looking at them, either. |
| But something about making
photographs of musicians - of music - connected strongly, emotionally with me in
a way that empty landscapes did not. Is it the sense of performance, all that
theatricality? does the music tap directly into my emotional core? or is it the fact that
I'm working with people? that it's a collaboration? |
| I suspect it's a combination of all of
those factors, and have no idea which might be most important. In the long run, it doesn't
matter. I enjoy working with the performers, in part because I'm starting to see that as
artists, they go through the same processes in bringing their art to life as I do. The
medium may be different; the results are different; but we all want to reach our audience
– whether they see our work or hear our work – and the process is the
same. And that's something I find endlessly fascinating. |
| So with this jazz series, I’m trying
to do a whole lot more than just show a particular performer on a specific stage –
I’m actually trying to capture the essence of the music, as it's made and as it's
heard. |
| Sometimes that means I'm looking at
portraits of the artists to show the physical and mental effort that goes into performing;
sometimes it's a look at instruments and figuring out how best to visualize the sound;
sometimes it's trying to get a sense of the whole-stage event. |
| Black-and-white film is used to remove the
distraction of literal colors, and to bring out the subtle shades of "color" in
the instruments, in the light, on hands and faces. |
| I work at concerts, street fairs, tours,
and individual performances in out-of-the-way clubs. Music – like art – happens
in many different places, in many different ways. You just have to want to see it. The
portraits in this series, then, are of artists who make music, and – ultimately
– a portrait of the music itself, for we experience the passions and emotions
generated by music in ways that go far beyond hearing alone. |
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