SOUNDSCAPES

The project ‘SOUNDSCAPES’ visualizes the complex emotional influence of music through the means of photography.

Since early childhood, music has played a crucial role in my life, outlining the borders of my knowledge about many different cultures, places and people. I still recall to this day the variety of images and symbols, provoked by certain fragments in the first musical compositions that I ever heard. The mood in each piece formed a long-lasting impression in my head, determining strong relationships between colours and melodies.

The musical genres and subgenres, such as indie and alternative rock, post-punk and shoegaze, developed my taste in music as a grown-up. I started noticing the similarities between some of my favourite songs and the imagery which they evoked in my mind. Faces and shapes slowly started to appear, as if through a fog, in similar color harmonies. I listened to these songs day after day and the images they brought became an extension of my thoughts. There had to be a way to capture these moments of truth that I was able to see in my mind’s eye. So I started recreating them out of my memory.

Some of the images in the series are inspired by the feeling of lightness that occurs during a long trip when I gaze for hours through the window into the open roads and fields. These pictures reveal more about the nature of the synesthetic visual experience and in this case the music is only a background for my thoughts. Other images get deeper into the songs’ narrative by visualizing the main characters in each story and placing them in a certain environment. Combined, the 17 images wash away the borders between real, surreal and unreal, known and unknown, close and distant.