TITLE: "Playing"

Music can be visible, if the musician is one with his instrument and if he offers his heartblood and feelings with playing his music. It creates intensive and personal moments.
The option of black and white focusses on the expression of the musician, the music and the ambiance.

The picture shows Steve Bailey (American bass player) with his special fretless 6 string signature bass. It was taken with a Canon D6 in February 2020.

AUTHOR: Manuela Haeussler (Germany)

I was born in the GDR in 1978. Creativity, music and visual expression are fixed parts of me since my childhood. Later these interests were completed by a huge curiosity for new things and other countries, by the interest for exchanges in other languages and especially in the common and univeral language of art.
I got my first analog camera (EXA 1a built in 1964, product of the GDR) at the age of 16. So I started my photographic development.
During my school years I was focussed on arts and music. An important motivation was winning an photography award at the age of 18 (German Youth Photography Award 1997).
Influenced by the circumstances after the wall had come down in 1989 (a certain kind of unsureness and a lot of unemployment around me), I had no courage to study arts or photography, even if I had the deep wish to follow my heart.
In between the 23 years of finishing school and today I made a lot of experiences and I fulfilled different roles like being a mother, a nurse, a musician, a student, a manager whatever.
But music and photography were remaining very important parts of my life all the time. I realized small and bigger film and photography projects like image films, band pictures, portraits and exhibitions.
3 years ago a picture I made created a resonance, which surprised me. I recognized, that I was able to create and to express much more with my pictures than I had known before.
I started working as a photographer seriously and I gain from my different experiences during my past lifetime.
Since 2 years I am working for the non profit photographer community „Dein Sternenkind“, that takes pictures of babies, whose life was ending much too early. Goal is to give their parents a touchable and visibile memory to support them in their grief.
But I don’t want to simply capture moments in time. I try to mix elements, that wouldn’t find to each other usually. I love experiments and I am following an analog trace. That means, I building camera filters by my own and I combine different elements like fire, sky, nature or water in a multistate process in my pictures.
The contents of my photographic art are people, emotions and music. I like abstract ideas and unusual combinations, but especially the beauty and clarity of black and white photography, digital as well as analog. I want to visualize the unseen or audible elements.
During the last months I was able to join local as well as international musical projects (for example coverartwork „You know what?“ by The Aristocrats USA/GB/GER; portrait photography „Scenes from the flood“ by Bryan Beller USA; coverartwork: „Badenianas brasileiros“ by Ravi Sawaya BRA). So I continue working with people, bands and musicians all over the world, even if the current situation makes everything a bit more difficult in the world of arts...