all photos: Sarah Gormley
Throughout my love affair with live music, it has been difficult to put my feelings into words. As a music photographer, I’ve found that creating an image has always felt more natural, somehow less contrived, yet still a personal way of establishing my connection to the collective experience that I love so much. Music photography tells the story of live performance in a similar way to a written review – it presents the facts of that experience, wrapping those facts in a mood, established through a tone, using certain literary and artistic tools. Presented with the challenge of writing a music review, I have profound respect for those who can do so with so much eloquence. Instead, I’ll leave my story-telling to the visual, and hope that through my photos you can, in some way, feel the magic of Matt Berninger’s voice, read the poetry in the gloomy and heartfelt lyrics, and hear the unmistakable, beautiful and often melodically discordant sounds of the National.
