'Bathe my path in shining light'
A soundtrack to a film that was never made is a familiar phrase often used by music journalists. Here we have a photobook of a film that was supposed to be made, but never was. Clear?
The film in question was to accompany the Afghan Whigs' 1996 album, Black Love. The film never saw the light of day, but here, photographer Ryan Spencer knits together a series of photographs that attempt to imagine the unmade film in a series of Polaroid stills taken of neo-noir films set in LA.
The black and white captures of colour television screens give many of the images a ghostly, vaporous feel; creating distortion and screen flares - a perfect correlative to the band's noir soul sound which saw singer Greg Dulli occupying himself with James Ellroy books and Weegee photographs during the recording.
Rebecca Bengal's hard boiled crime fiction piece further acts to create a pulp, heat-glazed LA crime backdrop.
Size: 108 x 178mm (softback)
Pages: 272
Publisher: TBW Books
