THE NUTCRACKER BALLET by Christopher Young

T H E N U

T C R A C K E R

B A L L E T

Christopher Young

It all started by accident in a graveyard

On Halloween of 2010, I was in the French Quarter of New Orleans, facing the tombstone of Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen, and the various odd gifts at its foot left by admirers. Doing the tourist thing, I took out my cell phone and was planning to take a color photograph, when by accident, I set it to black and white, took the photo, stared at it afterwards - and a light switch in my brain went on. An immediate connection with something that had been inside of me all along happened

like a flash of lightning, and I was hooked.

If I turned the camera's eye extremely close towards scrambled imperfections on the tombstones - rather than the standard shots of the names on them - a world opened up that made complete sense, at least on an abstract level.

The floodgate opened, and these 25 books represent different collections of this world. All black and white - the colors of the night. But why?

H.P. Lovecraft, in his book "Supernatural Horror in Literature," said: "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is the fear of the unknown." What I've tried to do with the subjects chosen is find ways to capture images from that invisible world of the unknown that he speaks of; the mystery behind that which is unseen; glimpses of hidden things; or things not hidden but seen in a different way - most effective and more mysterious, I believe, in black and white. As a film composer primarily of genre films, I've written lots of music to describe what I just mentioned, but for someone else's moving images. Now, here are my own still life visuals, trying to find ways to enter the unknownthis time without the music!

I haven't had any training in photography, so I don't really know what I'm doing. The earliest photos happened simply by just catching an unaltered moment of something that caught my eye. As time passed, though, I discovered that (partially by accident), as I swept my cell phone left to right, or up and down - then in fast circles, and also by whacking it on my hand, or the glass windows and windshield when I was in my carsomething new and exciting happened. As cell phone cameras developed, they offered editing options, which I started treating the raw photos with. Later onabout two years ago - I was taking shots of oil drills, when I whacked the car window too hard; the camera malfunctioned and started a permanent photo wobble which never went away. That created a consistent blurring effect on virtually every picture I took. I got attached to it. Some of the books tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. But most don't and are just collections of photos bound by a similar theme or a group. The books telling a story are pretty abstract in their presentation and require an imagination to follow; the clues are in the book titles themselves.

It's been suggested many times that I accompany the photos with music I'd write to describe them, so that a viewer could see and hear them at the same time. However, I decided it was best not to use music to influence the images. I'm not sure I'd even know how to score them successfully without biasing the viewer in the wrong way. It's much easier to compliment someone else's visuals than my own. The viewer should make music in their own heads if inspired, without any limits to their imaginations. So, silent the photos are, and silent they will always be!

In closing, I want to thank all of the amazingly wonderful and talented friends who helped get these books to the finish line. Beyond taking all the pictures and modifying them on my own, I was lost with the technology needed to set them in this final format. How lucky, how blessed I am to have had their input, and that our lives intersected. They all understood completely what I was trying to accomplish and took the journey with me into that invisible world. So again, thanks to all! Your friend, Chris