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I'What does music mean to you, what does life mean to you?’ This
was the question posed to each musician participating in the 2004 West
Cork Chamber Music Festival by photographer Achim Liebold. It is the question
explored within the portraits and a question that was given to those portrayed
on a sheet of paper at the time the photographs were taken. How seriously
the musicians took the question was up to them. What was asked of them
in responding was that they give an honest answer. For a brief moment
musician and photographer each explored what this answer might be, one
by writing down thoughts, the other by making pictures. Some of the portraits
forged through this encounter are shown here.
 A
portrait seeks to capture a likeness. The light-writing of photography
delivers a physical likeness, no matter how atypical the moment rendered.
But ‘likeness’ goes beyond the inscription of an individual’s
physique, it requires capturing something of the nebulous entity that
is the person; a particular presence, a particular way of being. The challenge
for the photographer is to create a situation in which this becomes possible.
Asked how you capture someone’s personality, Liebold suggests that
‘Different people require different approaches. With some you talk,
to others you don’t say a single word. Some have to feel comfortable,
others need to be challenged.’
 The
breadth of experience and level of skill required to create the intense
encounter from which an exciting portrait can emerge were pursued by Liebold
in a photographic career that began at the age of fifteen. Working as
a freelance photographer for a local newspaper in Germany, he spent the
next few years taking pictures of musicians and bands touring Germany.
His portrayal of the international music scene also included commissions
by record companies for images to be used on album covers and in promotional
materials. At the age of twenty Liebold opened a Studio for Still Life
Photography in Hamburg and undertook formal studies in film and photography.
The interest in celebrity, fashion and beauty that had fuelled his early
years as a photographer persisted but, having come to the conclusion that
‘to make a photograph of a person it is essential to learn the light
first…what light does, how you can use it, how you can alter it,’
he decided that still life photography would allow him to master this.
Initially he worked mainly for German and Dutch magazines and then the
German Bertelsmann Publishing Group took him ‘under their wings’
and, still working in a freelance capacity, he travelled the world as
well as undertaking commissions for luxury brands such as Waterman and
Chanel. Having mastered the use of light, Liebold focused his attention
on fashion photography. At that time fashion photography seemed to offer
the greatest scope for creativity, allowing him space ‘to play with
ideas, to try out new concepts.’
In his mid-twenties Liebold moved first to New York and then to Paris.
The former prompted pictures that were big and action packed, the latter
taught him ‘to concentrate more on the beauty of the detail, the
small thing.’ Perhaps it was the poetry of Paris that channelled
his sensitivity to the ‘personal dilemma’ in the world of the
performing arts toward an increasing interest in portrait photography.
‘The artist may have the most beautiful soul, the most interesting
mind, the most personal artistic statement but the media normally does
not cover that because they are more interested in the ‘star’
than the person.’ By contrast, ‘the quest to show something
of yourself which has a meaning to yourself (and maybe even to others)’
offered by a portrait fascinates Liebold.
Fed up with noise – ‘visual noise, audible noise, mental noise’
– Liebold moved to West Cork. In some measure this move coincided
with an increasing conviction that ‘a photograph is only valuable
if it is able to capture something of relevance.’ And ‘For a
portrait, I would say this: If the photograph can capture the personality
of a person, it is close to something of relevance.’
There is a simplicity in the composition of each of the photographic portraits
shown here that is beautiful. While each is different, each reveals and
is composed in response to a particular personality, the underlying structure
is shared. Each focuses intently on the face of an Irish musician. Each
is intimate, detailed and free of visual noise.
The words written by the musicians reflect upon music and life, and each
is quite different in tone and texture. And yet, for each communication
is crucial, an extraordinary exchange of emotion and ideas.
Juxtaposing the photographic portrait and the written words of each individual
replays something of the exchange between photographer and musician. Liebold
did not know the musicians’ answers to his question when he photographed
them, they did not know that he would add their words to their portraits.
They were told at the end of the session. Combining image and text allows
both photographer and musician to explore whether there is ‘something
real in the portrait’, and if ‘ there a harmony between their
words and their face?’
This exploration of the space opened up between the words and the image
also draws attention to a gap in the performance of self. As Liebold suggests,
‘our self perception is always different to the way other people
perceive us’. In the encounter with another we try to project a sense
of ourselves that we are comfortable with and read how we are being perceived.
This negotiation of visibility is played out in the process of making
a portrait and is the tension and resonance between words and image in
these portraits.
The intensity of Liebold’s portraits seizes your attention and draws
you in. The sincerity and candour of the inscribed words amplifies the
intimacy of the encounter. The tremulous relationship between the two
is intriguing and invites you to return again and again.
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