Originally Posted by
Bernice Loui
In ways identical to music, basic aspects of music pitch, harmony, chords, rhythm are some basic structures that are what makes music (most any kind of music) ... music in ways no different than photography or any other means of human expression. It is much about emotions, memory and passage of time being in the human condition.
This triggered my memory about an old thread titled “Johsel Namkung: a retrospective - book review.”
Here’s the photographer:
I remembered that Namkung strongly associated photography with the experience of music.
Just take a look at this, his web site’s general artistic statement:
I spend a lot of time looking for subjects. Oftentimes, I make a scouting trip, hiking for instance, going up a trail to a certain point. I usually leave my camera equipment behind, and hike and scout and come back, and if it’s worthwhile, I then take my camera up, and spend a long time adjusting, setting up, digesting or looking at it, and from different angles, distances, and so forth. And finally, when I find something, there always has to be a unifying, kinetic force. Which means the rhythm, and in musical terms the melodic lines. And polyphonic melodic lines especially, like Bach, for instance, or Handel and Mozart. Linear structures. And then its juxtaposition, its counterbalancing, which is called counterpoint in musical terms. And I find almost every time, when I see something, I always see melodic lines, and counterbalancing forces, and weight, and harmony. And that becomes the skeletal form of my photographs. So my photographs could always be interpreted through musical forms.
A case study of synesthesia?
I think the statement sounds (pun intended) very similar to Ethan’s post #3 above, except in exact reverse. That is, Namkung sees a landscape and “hears” it; Ethan hears some music and “sees” a landscape. What I find especially interesting is that Namkung mentions only Baroque and Classical-era composes, and Ethan Romantic and Modern-era composers. Any psychologists around here? ;^)
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