Andy Summers – A Certain Strangeness

From July 28 to October 5, 2022, the Ernst Leitz Museum Wetzlar presents the extensive work show of the British photographer and musician Andy Summers.

His guitar riffs are legendary, and as a brilliant musician and composer he has made The Police's sound unmistakable. But Andy Summers, born in 1942 in Blackpool/UK, is a creative multi-talent who has also long caused a sensation as a photographer. For over forty years, he has developed a unique photographic oeuvre, which he sees as a mental and visual counterpart to his music. For him, music and photography belong together: "The qualities I'm looking for are musical. That's the condition. You think of music in terms of harmony, line, form, volume, stillness, dynamism ... I think all those concepts translate into photography."
It all started on tour in 1979, when The Police were having their first major successes in the U.S. as well: "Sitting in a midtown hotel room in New York in September 1979, watching U.S. TV and my fingers running up and down the neck of my battered Telecaster guitar, it occurred to me that I should get a real camera." But that idea, which Summers recounts so casually, had a crucial consequence: "Our band, The Police, was fulminating in the US. It was fun, but sitting around staring at the walls of hotel rooms was boring - we needed distractions." From the beginning, photography was more than mere distraction from the monotony of eternally identical hotel rooms, because looking at these first motifs already reveals the special perception with which Summers observed his surroundings and thus his own life. His preferred subjects: Street scenes in American or Japanese metropolises, fascinating moments in South American cities. They reflect an urban surrealism, a "special strangeness" that questions the seemingly familiar in a new way. The camera is the best instrument for this. New York photographer Ralph Gibson gave him the decisive tip to choose a Leica camera. With an M4-2, Summers rediscovered photography all over again: "I was immediately hooked. I felt the Leica slowed down my photography, made it more meditative, made me think more before I pressed the button-with this camera, I felt like I was finally walking the true path," Summers recalls.
The Ernst Leitz Museum is now presenting an exciting insight into the work with around 150 photographs, showing densely composed, often reduced magical moments, captured on journeys in South America via the USA to Japan. A second group of images is closely tied to his experiences during his tours with The Police. The viewer is invited to be there directly on stage, but also backstage or on the tour bus. At the height of their band career, Summers' images provide glimpses of the rush of success, but also of the melancholy and silence on lonely nocturnal excursions in the metropolises where he happened to be. Like a nostalgic scout, he sought the poetry of the night, often experimentally expressive, but also in quiet stillness. Unifying elements of all motifs can be found in the precise composition of the image, in the deliberate cropping of the motifs, but also in the subtle wit that always resonates. The stylistic crossover he prefers in music is also reflected in his photography.
After the band finally ended in 2008, Summers continued his career as a solo musician, but a major part of his life was now photography. He added a Leica M Monochrom to his Leica M4-2. The multi-layered, powerful, but equally sensitive work can now be discovered in its richness in the exhibition.
Andy Summers, born in Blackpool on December 31, 1942, grew up in Bournemouth. He began playing the guitar at the age of eleven. As guitarist of The Police he became world famous, together with Sting and Stewart Copeland, between 1977 and 1984. The band members continued to reunite later, touring the world again in 2007. As a successful solo artist, Summers released numerous albums, composed film music, cooperated with numerous musicians and appeared as a multimedia performance artist.
In his teenage years, Summers gained his first photographic experience as a beach photographer in Bournemouth. From 1979 onwards, he again devoted himself intensively to photography. His photographs have been widely exhibited and published. The illustrated book A Certain Strangeness was published in 2019. Parallel to the photography exhibitions planned throughout Europe, Andy Summers will tour Europe in 2022/2023 with his multimedia show Harmonics of the Night.

More at: www.andysummers.com

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