MUSIC INSCRIBED IN THE BODY


In this series of images, I simply asked for the person’s visceral and immediate reaction to a melody. I sought to observe their response to an especially moving piece of music.

There were no rules or restrictions on their mode of expression or range of emotions … I asked them to experience the music and to reveal and manifest their feelings, each in their own way. Their reactions were entirely spontaneous and unscripted. I stood in the background and tried to make myself as inconspicuous as possible as I took the pictures.

My basic idea here is to capture the music as it is inscribed in the subjects’ facial and bodily expressions and movements … to encapsulate the music in visual format as it is embodied in the person’s expressions and movements … as their inner musical experience is externalized through their authentic visual selves.

Put differently, with these images I suggest that it is possible to actually see the music through the photographic subject … which is one of the seemingly limitless possibilities of the art of portrait photography.