Jazz, what an artform it is. It's exciting, moving, rooted in historic and pain, and has a way of transporting you to unreal places where the world is shaped by musical notes.
The idea
Walking around the Louvre, I stumbled upon this musician. But passing in front of him, I had imagined a photo I was incapable of capturing because of the setting and the light. Frustrated, I left and went on to take pictures of the pyramid. But, as he played his saxophone, I turned around, hoping I'd manage to get a better angle and use the environment to my advantage.
Those bars in between him and I are the bars of censorship, racial discrimination, and white domination the jazz community suffered for years. It's also the hard truth of an artist's life.
Why is jazz, like blues, so powerful and so enticing? Because of where it takes its roots. Jazz is a form of free expression based on feelings, the improvisation aspect of jazz, one of its core features, led the men and women to create not based on what sounded "good", but rather what sounded "right". Jazz is bathed in many different emotions, all of which speak to people in one way or another.
It's liberating, exciting, scary, melancholic, but most of all, it takes you to your gut. Jazz was never meant for the whites, let alone the upper class. It was supposed to stay in the confines of the black community since it was an "impure" form of music. It told stories the elite didn't want to hear, or didn't believe in. For a long time jazz had been the musical expression of the oppressed, akin to blues, where it took its roots from. Thanks to such a title, the art grew and took hold in the heart of many who wished to see the conformity of societal music disappear, including the whites who had never seen something such as this.
We were departing from the very broody mood of the pre-war era of blues, work songs, and field hollers. It was now time for something more rhythmic, that made your body move. When blues made people say things they shouldn't, jazz made people move like they shouldn't. Jazz contributed to liberate the body and, in a way, women, although at that time jazz was exclusively reserved for men, but it's contribution would only come later on.
The man, behind the bars, barely noticeable, not quite focused, and fair-skinned all paint a picture of jazz and its evolution throughout time. Forced (or not) to play out in the cold streets of Paris to make a living, or just to play for others, the man embodies that very nature of jazz. To play where the rich wouldn't, and in the conditions they wouldn't. That's what true jazz is. It's rough, hard to grasp, sometimes dissonant, it's a people's song, it tells the truth.
My photo wishes to tell that story the way it can.
The technique
No technic here. Just the emotion transcribed throughout his presence and his music.
Of course, the framing requires some sort of technicity, since getting him between bar wasn't easy, but whether it's while shooting or editing, I didn't create something incredibly complex.
The only technic, which everyone could argue is artistic sensitivity, is how my eye captured the seen differently than how anybody else would have. The fact that I could tell that by turning around I was capable of taking the picture I wanted is artistic technicity.
Tools
Camera: Canon 1300D
Lens: Canon 80-200 mm
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