SUNRISE FUGUE

Sunrise Fugue

“The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways.”

-Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams equated the photograph to music linking the similarities of the different art forms.  This is a series of photographs of a sunrise happening at Hilton Head Island, S. C. over a 30-minute interval of time. As Ansel Adam noted the negative is the visual representation of the composition. It is a structure of geomatic lines, shapes, and forms. And the way that negative is interpreted is how it is printed like an enactment.

I continued to print and as I printed, I thought about how the photographs of the sunrise, the textures, colors, and tones are printed similar to a little fugue. The collection of prints emerged like Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Little Fugue in G Minor”. Shows the layering of subjects and counterpoints on multiple melodic lines intermingle create the richness of harmony. The fugue’s main melody is called a subject, where one melodic line is moved to another using different keys. The lines overlap making a new melody adding complexity to the theme. This is a general description of a fugue, but it can give you an idea of musical composition in relation to visual composition.  

These photographs try to recreate the visual challenges of the fugue. The sunset is the same subject, but photographed over time, showing variations as the sun rises. Then there is the editing of the photographs, textures and color are applied, producing different, but somewhat similar photographs.