Photographer

Magnus Lorentzson

Fine Art photographY

The organs of the organ

I’m not an organist, but…

I think we’re talking late 80s here. One of the gigs I had back then was installing new lighting technology at the Gothenburg Concert Hall. It involved a lot of running between different rooms, different floors and different staircases with fixtures, cables, socket boxes, clamps, tools…

The installation took place during long, hot summer days in a closed concert hall.
And then
on one of those days
a door opened
on the first floor
and behind it
were thousands of organ pipes.
BAM!!!
I was sold.
Again.

Sometimes I think about what triggers you in different situations, and what feelings that trigging-thing release in you. Pour moi? One situation I noticed earlier, working as a sound or lighting technician and running a show that goes on for a long time, was how the interaction between the audience and the ensemble never was the same from one day to another – how, for example, the laughter occurs at different times and lasts for different lengths with different intensities, etc., which makes each gig unique.

Another trigger situation, that I can’t quite figure out, is how I can find different pipes in different materials and sizes so cool that I periodically drag around piles of flashes, tripods, cables, etc. and spend hours moving them around in small spaces to take photos of them. And, as if that wasn’t enough, how I still think it’s perfectly alright to spend days, weeks, months..   ..editing the pictures afterwards…

Anyway, this is what I did a few decades after my first declaration of love.
Now, much later, as I sit down looking at the photos, it’s like returning to a secret world. There seem to be pipes to suit everyone’s taste; pipes that have just awakened, that don’t have long to go, that are at the peak of their career, from different cultures, reminiscent of the morning rays of the sun hitting an industrial city. I thought for a while about the easiest way to connect a smoke machine somewhere between the compressor and the pipes, so that I could take pictures when the smoke came out of the organ pipes! Well, I didn’t. yes, I do regret it.

Welcome to the reasonably analogue world of pipes!