Abbey Highway Studios recognises songs pictures with inaugural awards

LONDON, May possibly 12 (Reuters) – London’s Abbey Highway Studios hosts its inaugural new music pictures awards this weekend, shining the spotlight on a class it suggests deserves recognition.

From dwell snaps to personal portraits, the May possibly 14 awards, described as the initial to celebrate the artwork of new music pictures, will honour each rising and founded photographers.

All taken final year, the shortlisted pictures involve photographs of singers Billie Eilish and Arlo Parks, musician David Mrakpor as nicely as revellers at reside functions.

“Music Images Awards started off as a nugget of thought from 1 of our staff simply because we see even from our archives that we have at Abbey Street how important pictures is in telling the tale of what is actually heading on in a studio or behind the music,” Abbey Highway Studios Managing Director Isabel Garvey told Reuters.

“And as we went digging, we realised it was a category that actually wasn’t celebrated. So we resolved… with our connections with musicians, with creatives, with the complete sector, that really we ended up in really a distinctive placement to mount an award ceremony like this and give these photographers the platform to celebrate all of their perform.”

The awards characteristic open and invited groups, with the latter which includes portrait photography, editorial pictures and artist-at-do the job.

New York-dependent photographer Eric Johnson, who has snapped pics of Biggie Smalls, Missy Elliott and Lauryn Hill, will get the icon award for his “contribution to the artwork of tunes images”.

The open up groups are produced up of reside music pictures, studio pictures, undiscovered photographer of the 12 months, and championing scenes and zeitgeist, described as the “impression that defines audio in 2021”.

“We definitely know there are a whole lot of proficient audio photographers out there, but we weren’t rather geared up for the onslaught of applications,” Garvey explained. “I feel we experienced in excess of 3,000 candidates among the open groups.”

The judging panel incorporates veteran photographers this sort of as Jill Furmanovsky.

“I was amazed there was so a lot content from a calendar year when we have been in COVID so they could not have been just about as lots of cases to shoot audio photography as in prior yrs,” she said.

“And nonetheless people today have been undertaking it: small gigs or gigs with masks on or people today recording in their rooms or their homes and so on. It was quite moving actually at situations to see that and also historic really, simply because it was a second in time.”

Reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian Enhancing by Alex Richardson

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