Soundtracks for Photographers In The Darkroom, In The Studio, and At The Computer
Photography and music has been intertwined for decades.
Leopold Manes a Leopold Godowsky Jr. hummed classical music to keep timing when they were inventing their unique and sorely missed film. (This is no accident: Did you know that Godowsky was George Gershwin's brother-in-law?) As if to bring it around full circle, Paul Simon wrote a classic song about Kodachrome film.
Photography references abound in muic. Outkast told you to shake it like a Polaroid Picture. Ed Sheeran, Nickleback, and Def Leppard all penned very different songs titled "Photograph." Ringo waxed nostalgic about a photograph. Jim Croce sang whistfully of Photographs and Memories. Elvis Costello angrily sang of a camera click-click-clicking in his head. Natalie Merchant's Carnival is the closest thing to an ode to street photography that I know of--and the video features her using a Leica M3! And on it goes.And it goes the other way, too. Photographers like working with music. There is a rumor (which I may have heard during a photojournalism class) that one war photographer had a walkman with a tape of the soundtrack from "Apocolypse Now" to get him in the mood.
When I interviewed Walter Iooss for an article in Modern Photography I shot a portrait of him in his studio and he was paying "Wid Thing" by Tone Loc. "I was photographing the Giants here last week. They're into this!" he shouted at me over the rap din. Yes, the New York Football Giants. Lesson learned? Play whatever your client is into to put them at ease.
I'm old enough to have created a few mix tapes. For you kids reading this, those were collections of favorite songs. In the late 80s, I had one tape of my favorite Nick Lowe songs (I cleverly called it "Nick Lowe Main") with songs like Cruel to be Kind, So It Goes, and Breaking Glass and another called "Crenshaw Combo," featuring generous album cuts like Rocking Around in NYC, Mary Anne, Monday Morning Rock, and the exquisite breakup song, The Distance Between, from Marshall Crenshaw's first three LPs. I wore out these tapes rockin' (and printing) around the darkroom. The music kept me going during long printing sessions.
Over the years, I've played records, tapes, and eventually CDs while working in my darkroom. From REM's Live's Rich Pageant (including the under-appreciated I Am Superman) to the B-52's Cosmic Thing, featuring the mind-blowing Junebug, to the Ramones' Road to Ruin (I Wanna Be Sedated) to whatever they were playing in the middle of the night on WNEW-FM or WLIR, I always had music on. In fact, it was WLIR that introduced me to Star Trekkin', a novelty song, which I heard for the first time while printing in my darkroom.
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