In January 2002 I started a project with oboist Nicholas Benda to make work to show in his home as part of the annual Oxford Arts Week Open Studios event in May.

Ideas for the project sprang from an earlier series of black and white photographs that centred on the largely unobserved craft of reed making – a large part of the activity of oboe playing.  Over a number of sessions I experimented with the pinhole cameras ability to depict infinite depth of field with a series of colour still life images, either by placing the camera on the table with the tools or by balancing it above the objects using the music stand as an improvised tripod.  There are echoes of Dutch still life painting in the colour and composition of these pictures and I found reading ‘Looking at the Overlooked – Four essays on Still Life Painting’ by Norman Bryson very inspiring.

A series of more abstract images resulted from Nick playing the oboe really close to the pinhole aperture in sunlight and practising scales.  Collecting light from these rhythmic repetitions formed wave-like patterns within the illusionistic space of the photograph and I became fascinated by the possible correspondence between the instrument, its sound and the trace it left on the negative.  The next logical step was to test this theory out by working with other musicians and I made some with a flautist and cellist that I think do evoke the character of the instruments.

Click Here for Improvisations