Heavenly Sounds 30

Artist Maurizio Anzeri (Italian, active England, born 1969)

Date2016

Mediumfound gelatin silver print with embroidery

Dimensionssheet: 24.9 × 20.1 cm (9 13/16 × 7 7/8 in.)
framed: 39 x 34 cm (15.35 x 13.39 in.)

ClassificationsPhotographs

Credit LineHelen Sagoff Slosberg Fund

Object number2017.14

Label TextTwo lines in Billie Holliday’s song Moonglow (1952) inspired the title of Anzeri’s series Heavenly Sounds: “We seemed to float right through the air. Heavenly songs seemed to come from everywhere.” Like Holliday’s moody ballad that rejoices in magnetic attraction, Heavenly Sounds charts how something invisible, like electricity, connects people and places “right through the air.” Anzeri calls his threaded photographs “photo-sculptures.” These hybrid objects are crafted using vintage photographs often found at flea markets. He describes his relationship with found images as “landscapes on which to map out my own unique geography of suggestion.” The embroidered additions are carefully planned using tracing paper before pinning the paper. Needlepoint traces back to his childhood: “I come from three generations of fishermen, and I have seen men [mending nets] using threads and needles all my life…Like fishermen use nets to catch their prey, I use needles and threads to capture images.”

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