It all starts with fifteen photos found in an antique shop on the Oude Gracht in Utrecht somewhere in the late summer of 2019. Photos from the bin of snapshots. Photos that fascinated, moved or made me laugh in one way or another. Of which I realized at some point: I have to do something with this rich harvest. There is a story behind these photos. Or even better: behind every photo sounds a song. And so, the concept was born: a song cycle about a group of found photos, where each of the fifteen photos has a song written.

The cycle has a fixed order. It had to start with The Crow. That's because that photo was found before and is also the first song I wrote. That song is also something of a statement of principles: “I once had a crow who could speak my name”. It's the song that breathed life into the rest of the songs.

The songs after that follow the photos in a sort of natural way. They go through many different moods: tragic, sad, resigned, sweet, laughable, exciting and absurd. The stories sometimes closely follow what is shown or sometimes even literally what is written on the back of the photo (as in the case of Your Niece Mildred). In other cases, more fantasy has been used and situations and characters have been created.

In the end there is one thing that binds all fifteen photos and songs together and that gives even the most cheerful photos and songs a patina of melancholy: the fact of a past that is gone forever and that most likely everyone in the photos and everyone who took the photos is no longer there. That fact returns in one way or another in all songs.

The cycle closes with The Photo That Won't Give Away Its Secrets and is also the last song written for the Cycle. It's a song about a photo that leaves a lot to be guessed and actually expresses what also applies to the rest of the photos: no matter how many stories we've come up with, the real story behind these photos is a secret that no one can tell. In that sense, this song is an ironic commentary on all the previous songs.

Unintentionally, writing and recording the Cycle has become a Covid isolation project. Not that this should be given much meaning, but of course it has had a certain influence. Writing and recording parts separately from each other has made the songs what they are now. Afterwards, a few guitar parts were recorded elsewhere, but the core of the Cycle was created in that strange time of social aloofness.

After a long time of rethinking, (re-)recording, refining, mixing and mastering, the time has come to unleash the Found Photography Song Cycle in the world. Publish the Cycle on various platforms, media and, above all, to perform it live. This performance will take the form of a theatrical show in which the fifteen photos play a prominent role. Whereby the photos may literally sound, sing and tell their stories. And finally, retreat into silence again.

Robert Gillesse, April 2023