“Photographs, like poems, as T.S. Eliot once emphasized, don’t say anything; they just are,” says Magnum photographer Stuart Franklin to the Phoblographer in an interview. “…the reading of photographs will always be personal.” His photo of a burning violin lends itself to this idea very well. One could easily see a piece of their childhood as a concertmaster violinist in high school suddenly turned to ash. They could also interpret it as an attack on the arts. No matter the case, the story behind Mr. Franklin’s photo is far different than we might feel. Perhaps this is why it’s part of the current Magnum Photo’s Square Prints Sale.
This photo was made by Stuart as part of a small tribute book for Leonard Cohen’s 80th birthday. “I was captivated by the line about the burning violin in the song ‘Dance Me to the End of Love,'” Mr. Franklin tells us. “I was living some of the time in a cabin in Norway’s western Fjord land and teaching down the coast. I’d brought this old violin up and in the middle of winter when the light was blue, and the lake in front of the garden was frozen.” He then set it on fire and photographed the process.
There wasn’t much else to it besides that. Stuart believes he shot it on his Leica M9 and used purely natural light. He described it as a purely straight shot that needed almost no post-production — though he admits he shot a lot of frames. The color contrast between the frozen blue lake and the orange flames makes the photo so ravishing. The contrast between blue and orange is common in the photo world. Sigma builds it into its cameras with a specific profile, and Lomography does its own take on it with Lomochrome Turquoise.
In a more natural sense, you could think of it as the sunrise’s first golden rays casting aside the blue shades that the dawn brings. Of course, that’s not what’s happening in this photo, but to anyone studying photography, this image is an intriguing marriage of a concept and a colorful composition.
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I have no hopes. All photographs have an ambiguous quality. Everyone looking at photographs has a different read as to what they mean to them personally.
Stuart Franklin
One has to wonder if human elements like this can be understood by the AI community trying to replace photographers. Lots of us who are greener in our careers might ponder this. But Stuart Franklin doesn’t seem very fussed. “I feel we have lived with AI in photography since the beginnings of digital photography, when machines invented the content of spaces between pixels, and Photoshop could have created an image of the Pope in a puffer jacket (a recent AI sensation),” says Mr. Franklin. “Today, AI has started to infect everything from college coursework to high-stakes gambling. In photography, these days, I try to avoid the issue by photographing 90% on film and processing and printing the photographs myself.”
Image by Stuart Franklin. Used with permission. For more stories on Stuart Franklin, head to this link.
Weegee, Miranda Barnes, Roger Deakins, Alfredo Jaar, Hannah Reyes Morales, Larry Sultan, Todd Hido, Judd Apatow, Stuart Franklin, The Anonymous Project, and more are joining Magnum photographers and estates for Vital Signs (April 17–23). During the sale, for one week only, more than 100 museum-quality prints, signed by the photographers or estate-stamped, are available for just $110. All prints will be on view at the Magnum Gallery, London, from Monday, April 17 to Saturday, April 22, and available on the Magnum website.
