JPG Magazine: Stories: Ten Tips: Photonality

Ten Tips

Photonality

By Thomas Priemon

10 August 2007

I am a Composer/ Photographer. I created the medium of Photonality after doing many performance shots for musicians. I wanted to be a part of the music. I use the camera as an additional instument within the performance shooting in out and around an axis to create a melodic flow. A visual music composition consist of numerous negatives and exposures each picture plane moving into the next to create a melodic flow within the composition. The compositions read like sheets of music. Photonality has its roots in artist such as Kandinsky, Klee, Pollack, De Kooning, Siskind, Rauschenberg along with composers like John Cage who was a master of alternative compositions. the difference between the artist above and my work is that they woked within a single picture frame to create music. Photonality uses anywhere from 24 to 124 images each moving into the next and working as a whole to create a visual melodic flow.

I have created visual music compositions from some of the leading jazz musicians in the field. Musicians such as Joe Lovano, George Coleman, Cecil Payne, Arturo Sandoval, Tom Harrell, Steve Coleman, Cindy Blackman, Ravi Coltrane, Tim Berne, Satoko Fujii and Cuong Vu to name a few. I have composed from jazz standards with Cab Calloway Orchestra, directed by C. Calloway Brooks to the avante garde with Satoko Fujii and Cuong Vu. Katy Roberts titled a song after Photonality from the work we did together. Photonality works have graced CD covers to inside booklets. Several Limited Editions books were made from the Photonality Jazz Series compositions.

I extended the visual music compositions in 2007 to jazz/ dance when i was asked to participate in "The Kandy Project" in Philadelphia. A group of dream photographers such as Bob Asman, Leah MacDonald, Tony Ward, Ron Tarver and Domenic Episcopo to name a few were asked to photograph model Kandy(Kelicia Pitts) for a traveling exhibition. Each photographer was to do three images of the model in thier own artsitic vision. I composed a visual jazz/ dance composition as Kandy did an improv jazz dance to the music of Miles Davis. I worked the camera in out and around the dancer moving light and form around the axis in a melodic rhythm.

Much of my knowledge of recording came from doing visual music compositions in the recording studio where musicians such as Winston Byrd from T.S. Monks band was recording his new Cd. With my compositions i lay down a visual music track on the film using a Nikon SLR and a Contax rangefinder. I use this within the performance moving the track in out and around the musicians keeping in mind not to distrurb the atmosphere that they are creating for an audience. If i was to give ten tips on my work with Photonality it would be

1- knowledge of the materials so you know them like you know the

movement of your hands.

2- Have a project plan

3- visualize how you want that plan to work

4- Create a time frame ,whether short term or ongoing.

5- Research the material you are going to use....in the case of

Photonality it would be getiing familiar with the musicians work.

6- Develop a relationship with the performers so you know what they

are doing within thier work so you can incorporate that in your own

work.

7- Make the performers and venues aware of what you will be doing at

the performance.

8- In Photonality a key is using existing light ...which is not always

what you want it to be....so as not to disturb the audience in the

performance and do not disturb the atmosphere the musicians are

creating....stay as inconspicuous as possible.

9- Keep your equipment in good condition and always have a back up

camera when out doing a project....just in case.

10- Believe in what you are doing.

The 10 photographs are part of the Satoko Fujii composition "The dog barks...in a crescent moonlight" with Satoko Fujii. They show the progression of the composition.

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