The last session of term was a collation of members’ work based on song titles. The minimal rules set by Tim were: images can be newly taken or from personal archives; the title can be any type of song – pop, rock, choral, sacred; and submissions should include the song title and artist. Sixteen people contributed 43 pictures.
The 34 composers and artists represented ranged from Bach to the Dixie Chicks and Dvorak to Lita Rosa. Songs spanned ‘Autumn Leaves’ to ‘Flash Gordon’, ‘Psalm 66’ to ‘Waterloo Sunset’ and ‘Tangled Up in Blue’ to ‘Calling Occupants (of Interplanetary Craft)’. Three titles and four musicians were duplicated. Photographic styles embraced abstracts, nature, still life, landscape and street photography. Locations spread from London to the Yellowstone NP, Cambridge to Indonesia and Shoreditch to Great Gransden.
Members tackled the project in broadly two ways. Most people opted for iterating between a photograph they had and a song title that struck a chord: a photograph prompted a song or a song reminded them of a photograph or both. This could have led to some strained connections, but in most cases it was logical and easy to guess the song/title from the picture, other than with the more obscure tunes. A few people chose the more difficult route of taking a specific photograph, usually a still life, to illustrate a chosen title. There was little use of Photoshop techniques. If there was a prize for tongue in cheek inventiveness it would have gone to Nick Kerry for his Reinhardtian black rectangle illustrating The Beatles’ ‘Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night’.
Photos: 1. ‘Ticket to Ride’, The Beatles, 1965 (Bloomsbury Street, London 2011); 2. ‘Fields of Gold’, Sting, 1993 (Quy Fen, 2018); 3. ‘Stairway to Heaven’, Led Zeppelin, 1971 (Tate Britain, 2019)