Landscape and all that Jazz

A new article has appeared in On Landscape discussing the relationship between Jazz and Landscape photography. It can be found here. The origins of the article lie in attending a concert in Marly by the group PrismE from Geneva. They had given one of their pieces the name Bokeh – which of course set of a train of thought that led to learning more about Jazz photographers, artists influenced by Jazz, finding relevant articles already in On Landscape by Tim Parkin and Guy Tal, those ECM album covers, and the influence of nature on Jazz composers.

The article concludes:

“But we should not perhaps push this analogy too far. Creating good jazz is really difficult, requiring both a high degree of talent and long hours of practice and experience in making choices in working with other musicians. Creating a good image also requires some combination of talent, practice and experience in the choices we make, but I am not sure we can claim to reach the same level of difficulty. We frame and we click. We bring our experience and emotions to bear in doing so, and we may have to make an effort (or get up early) to be in the right place at the right time, but in the end we frame and we click. That is our act of creation. If you can see a jazz riff in the results, then perhaps the best that we can hope for might be a quiet smile of recognition (or else just a swipe on to the next one …..).”

5/4 with harmonics, Lauterbrunnental, Switzerland, 2023