What is the relationship between photography and sound? In today’s visually-dominated culture, how can we use sound to respond to what we see around us?
Sound Photography is the biggest ever worldwide artistic interaction between photographers and sound artists, covering 34 countries and six continents with sound pieces inspired by photographs.
Explore the interactive sound photography gallery
Explore the sound photography map
Explore the project below – click on a title to hear the sound, and click the “information” symbol to read how the photograph inspired the sonic composition. The sound database may take a short time to load, so please wait a few seconds to start listening!
You can also experience the project in a full-screen immersive interactive photo gallery:
Explore the interactive galleryShare the Sound Photography project:
Explore the Sound Photography global map
Sound players designed and built by Tim Waterfield at Kennebec.
More than 160 photographers and sound artists from 32 countries took part in the project, making it the largest global artistic interaction between photographers and sound artists.
Photographs in the project cover everywhere from Djibouti and Botswana to India, Vietnam and Australia, and include:
– Iconic locations such as Tiananmen Square, the Empire State Building and Copacabana Beach;
– Political protests, social commentary and photojournalistic stories;
– Environmental studies and nature photography;
– Some of the world’s most beautiful cities, including Paris, Venice, Kyoto and Chefchaouen (Morocco’s “blue city”).
The sounds created in response demonstrate an extraordinary breadth of creative approaches including:
– Recordings of melting ice, floating driftwood, electromagnetic fields or words translated into 20 languages;
– Using the raw data from a photograph to construct brand new sounds;
– Using elements of the image as musical notation from which to build new melodies;
– Collections of historical sound recordings from the location of the photograph to bring its past to life;
– Sonic fairytales assembled from legendary fictional tales through the ages.