Small format, great consequences. The history of music binds strictly with that of photography: each photographic milestone left its imprint on the vinyl covers. As time capsules do, these square-format surfaces provide a comprehensive view on the history of photography, enclosing music and picture in the same entity. Photographers have long cooperated with musicians to design album covers and musicians have also submerged into deep details of photography to find the strongest photos that fit their music the best.

More than 400 iconic album covers are on display in Capa Center’s exhibition titled Total Records – The great adventure of album cover photography. The show opens on 15 June and features such great visual artists as Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, David Bowie, Damien Hirst or Annie Leibovitz.

Introduction to the exhibition, written by Jacques Denis French journalist:
A history of photography through the prism of the vinyl record. These two media, which left their mark on the 20th century, interplayed in all their forms, from artwork to illustration, figuration to experimentation. The show is based on this diversity of intentions and propositions. The first two images published on an album cover— an artsy vision of Broadway and a more figurative shot of a cowboy—already suggested that anything was possible.

The format—33 rpm, 45 rpm, a circle in a square—encapsulates almost the whole history of photography. Many photographers have left their mark on these 30×30 cm covers. Photography has played a leading role in the history of recorded music. Looking at an album cover, you can almost hear what you see. Photographers illustrated many classics. Who hasn’t purchased a record based on its cover?

The image of Abbey Road has come down through the past half-century just as surely as the Beatles’ music. The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers record sleeve featured Andy Warhol’s famous crotch shot, but the world’s foremost photographers, including David Bailey, Hiro, Annie Leibovitz and Robert Frank, illustrated some of the group’s other album covers. Some photographers built a style; others built icons.

Labels built visual identities where photography mattered more than anything else: Francis Wolff’s black and white photos for Blue Note, ECM’s shades of grey, the flashy colours of Hypnosis, etc. House productions foreshadowed a sound. Conversely, album covers featured many of the century’s symbolic, historic images: a portrait of Céline, the Great Depression seen through the eyes of the Farm Security Administration photographers, May 1968, Black Power in the United States, etc.

Every technique—from photojournalism to photomontage, photo booths, photos used for a purpose other than that for which they were intended, overexposed photos and photos within the photo— can be found in these 30×30 cm squares. The deeper you dig, the vaster the subject seems.

Venue: Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center
Address: 1065 Budapest, Nagymező Street 8.
Telephone number: +36 1 413 1310

More: http://capacenter.hu/en/kiallitasok/total-records-2/