Ed Henderson Suggests Sound Tracks for Photographs

Directed by

John Baldessari

Baldessari has commented that he is "less interested in the form art takes than the meaning an image evokes." In Ed Henderson Suggests Sound Tracks for Photographs, he explores the relation between what is heard and what is seen, appropriating deliberately cliched imagery and generic film music to construct a series of surreal mini-movies. Baldessari describes photographs from National Geographic magazine to Ed Henderson, who picks out pieces of mood-setting stock music and sound effects to pair with the images. Baldessari subtly influences Henderson's selections, steering him towards music that he deems more appropriate. This strange collaboration results in an uncanny, often comic conjunction of sound and image. Removing the photographs and music from their original contexts, Baldessari deconstructs mass cultural narrative, suggesting how the associative meanings and evocations of its cliches and genres have permeated the collective unconscious.