RECORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS — Helen Levitt

1.
Up until 1938, album covers consisted of simple, undifferentiated brown cardboard. But they were suddenly transformed into objects designed with very clear graphic purposes. The beginning of this change is associated with Alex Steinwess (1917-2011), the art director of Columbia Records who, aged 23, urged the label to develop an innovative and attractive approach to sell records. This was the discovery of a lifetime, as he subsequently secretly revealed: I would have paid them for the job. Album covers progressively played a decisive role in the construction of the identity of record labels, without exception. A large proportion of these graphic solutions, in particular the albums produced in the late 1960s, gained widespread recognition, due to their connection to key moments in the history of popular music, from The Beatles to The Velvet Underground, from the Rolling Stones to Pink Floyd. On the other hand, such iconic relationships are rare, in the context of all existing musical production. In light of this fact, a consistent visual project can be as significant, or more significant, than the music itself. Over recent years, collectors who first grasped this reality — i.e. the importance of this musical format as a space for visual representation — have built significant album cover collections, from the most influential collectors, such as Guy Schraenen (1941-2018) whose collection was published in Vinyl Records & Covers By Artists, 2005, to more obscure ones, such as Jan Bellekens, who published Covered: Classic Sleeves And Their Imitators, 2011. Of all the graphic manifestations that we associate with album covers, I was interested in pursuing a less evident, and somewhat more subterranean line of enquiry — that focused on the meeting places between this history and the parallel history of photography. I began to look for and acquire vinyl records whose covers featured historical photographs, appropriated by musicians, designers or editors who, at some point, chose pre-existing images to create the identity for their records. It is, therefore, a collection that consists of iconic, historical and artistic images, in which the original photographs have been presented in museological contexts. They are, therefore, photographs that have been transferred from galleries and museums and were not initially created in order to be used in this specific object. It is a collection based on the encounter between two histories: of musical culture and of photography.

2.
The collection has been built through reducing the distance between each original photograph and its reception, referring to the principles of reproduction and dissemination of the artistic work that André Malraux explored in his essay, Museum Without Walls. Above all, the idea of reproducing the artwork as being synonymous with expanding the physical space of the museum, through an experience in which the observer gains in the field of knowledge but loses in the field of authenticity. The understanding of this distance is evident in these album covers. The works presented here were taken from their original artistic contexts and reproduced in a distorted manner from their original matrices — from the work initially thought and conceived by their authors. Firstly, by transforming the scale, and also by altering the format, framing, colour, juxtaposing it with other images, among many other possibilities of adulteration. One of the most stimulating aspects of this collection is precisely the experience of confrontation between the original work and its reproduction. A set of mirrors that is only possible to establish through the inventory available in this website, in which each entry in the collection is accompanied by a technical sheet that specifies the details of the album and also the origin of the photograph: the author, title and date. This exercise is built on a classification and documentation system which may be debatable, but which, at the same time, is entirely necessary to identify connections between the objects hitherto available on the platform.

3.
Discovering, studying, thinking and making an inventory of the history of photography based on the album covers of popular music encouraged research and a collection of cases that consisted of a sum of artistic conceptions and representations using very different formal and conceptual assumptions. The collection is not framed within a closed artistic orientation. Its exclusive nature is to uphold the core criterion that the photographs belong to widely recognized authors. Integrating the heterogeneity of these creative processes, which often lie outside more established contexts, has driven my review of the history of photography, admitting alternative and complementary narratives that encourage the construction of more plural discourses. For example, the discovery of photographers from less obvious locations, while allowing new interpretations to be formulated about the paths taken by photographers who play an essential role in this story. As the collection expanded, it became equally challenging to identify a set of resonances between image and sound. Using this website, it is now possible to establish correspondences between different photographic typologies and musical genres. The most evident example of this intersection is the reproduction, on Blues album covers, of photographs from the Farm Security Administration — the programme created to combat rural impoverishment during the Great Depression. Another relationship that has become undeniable over time is the presence of the photomontages created by John Heartfield (1891-1968) on Punk music album covers. Finally, this collection not only aims to consider these possible relationships or identify the primordial photographs, it is intended, on the basis of an object not designed for this specific purpose, to activate the relationship with the photographic practice, admitting variations in terms of the uncertainty of how to read, interpret and construct the history of photography.

In 2007 I started a collection of vinyl records with covers that reproduce carefully selected-photographs. These are photographs appropriated from a possible history of photography and were therefore not created specifically to be used in this particular object. These reproductions allowed me to explore visual and sound relationships that I deepened in my PhD thesis, completed in January 2014. This website shares the objects I've been collecting. The entry for each vinyl record includes information about the album (music artist, nationality, title, label, year or music genre), and a short caption about the photograph (author, title, nationality, year and related tags, as well as an external link to the original photograph). Collecting is a never-ending process, so the website is updated regularly. I have done my utmost to provide strict specifications for each entry, but if you discover any inaccuracies or have any additional information, please contact me. Thank you.

I am an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto (FBAUP) since 1999. Member of FBAUP's Executive Board. Director of the MA in Image Design(MDI) since 2014. Director of the Centre for Studies in Design and Art (CEDA) from 2015 to 2024. I completed my PhD in Art & Design in 2014. I'm researcher at ID+: Research Institute for Design, Media and Culture and collaborate with i2ADS: Research Institute in Art, Design and Society. My full CV is available here. You can find me on Instagram or drop me an email jc[at]josecarneiro[dot]org.

Photography by Liliana Mendes, 2023

E
- England
- England/United States
U
- United States
- United States/France
- Ukraine/Russia
- United States & Spain
F
- France
- France/Brazil
S
- Switzerland
- Switzerland/France
- Switzerland/United States
- Sweden
- South Africa/England
- Scotland
- South Africa
- Spain
D
- Denmark/United States
- Denmark
L
- Luxembourg/United States
R
- Russia
H
- Hungary
- Haiti
- Hungary/United States
G
- Germany
- Germany/England
- Germany/United States
- Greece
I
- Italy/United States
- Italy
- Italy/Scotland
- Ireland
- Iran
- Israel
- Iceland
B
- Belgium
- Burkina Faso
- Brazil
J
- Japan
A
- Austria/United States
- Austria/England
- Angola
P
- Portugal
N
- Netherlands
- Netherlands/United States
W
- Wales
M
- Mali
- Morocco
K
- Kenya
C
- Czech Republic
- Canada
T
- Turkey
- Thailand

W
- War Photography
- War Photography-Magnum Photos
P
D
- Documentary Photography
- Dada-Surrealism
C
S
F
M
- Magnum Photos
A
- Any Classification
O
- Outsider Art

F
- Folk
- Folk Rock
- Funk Metal
- Funk Soul
- Funk
- Field Recording
- Fusion
- Free Improvisation
I
- Indie Rock
- Industrial
- Industrial Metal
- Indie Pop
- Instrumental
- IDM
- Interview
P
- Pop Rock
- Poetry
- Pop
- Popular Brazilian Music
- Post Punk
- Punk
- Psychedelic Rock
- Prog Rock
- Post Industrial
- Post Rock
T
- Techno
- Trip Hop
- Tech House
H
- Heavy Metal
- Hardcore
- Hard Rock
- House
- Hip Hop
B
- Blues
- Blues Rock
- Black Metal
- Bossanova
- Breakbeat
- Britpop
S
- Synth Pop
- Soul
- Spoken Word
E
- Experimental
- Electronic
- Easy Listening
- Electronic Jazz
- Electro
C
- Contemporary
- Classical
R
- Rock
- Reggae
A
- Ambient
- Alternative Rock
- Afro Cuban
- Afrobeat
- Art Rock
J
- Jazz
- Jazz Funk
- Jazz Blues
K
- Krautrock
M
- Metal
- MPB
N
- New Wave
D
- Darkwave
- Disco
- Downtempo
- Death Metal
- Dream Pop
U
- Unknown Genre
W
- World
L
- Latin Jazz
- Latin
G
- Grunge
- Grindcore
- Goth Rock

Helen Levitt

Photographer

Helen Levitt

Untitled, New York (Spider Girl, Green Car), 1980

United States / Street Photography

Music Artist

Stars

My Radio, Setanta, 7", 2003

Canada / Indie Rock