Photographer and mixed-media artist Julian Parker-Burns doesn’t start conversations with generic stuff like “What’s up” or “How’s it going.” He’s more likely to ask, “Any excitements?”
He bypasses the humdrum and goes straight to the positive energy, the spark that sticks in the mind. His own work is about capturing these “excitements,” and one current focus is taking photographs of live music events. He highlights essential micro-moments that fly by the average concertgoer, whether at a large-scale outdoor festival or at a cozy spot like the Luthier’s Co-op in Easthampton, a space that inspired him to call the town home.
I first met Parker-Burns when we worked together at For the Record in Amherst circa 1999. During downtime between customers, he was not an idle stander-arounder. He calmly created (and kept adding to) a vibrant collage made from the staid promotional material sent by record companies.
He’s had a lifetime of travel: As he notes on his website, “As a third culture kid, a diplomat’s spouse and an American expat, I have made a life as a professional stranger. I am always living between cultures.” With his mixed-media collage art, he uses paintbrush, photos and scissors to create surreal summations of those far-flung places.
I spoke with Parker-Burns this past weekend, at a time when his stunning photos from Transperformance and the Springfield Jazz & Roots Festival were the talk of Facebook.
Clubland: When did you first realize you had that kind of eye, and why is photographing live musicians a current focus?
Parker-Burns: I’ve been making pictures since I was 7 or 8 with an Ektra 110, but photographing music didn’t happen until I was a resident of Butterfield dormitory at UMass (the smallest dormitory on campus). There, I was (amongst many other roles) a member of the Butterfield Arts Group that produced art shows, coffee houses and music festivals, and I documented a great deal of those events. I knew the artists and musicians intimately, and making images of them came very naturally.
Clubland: What was your first attempt?
Parker-Burns: I wouldn’t know … though an image of mine keeps coming back to me over the past three years, a photo from 1993 of a band that was making their Valley debut, Hot Crossed Nuns. That band later solidified as Soup and then made the leap to becoming the Drunk Stuntmen. To see what Alex Johnson and Steve Sanderson have made of their art and this Valley since then is truly inspiring. Taking a picture now will lead to some beautiful points of perspective in the future.
Clubland: You’re also a musician. Does that help when photographing a live concert?
Parker-Burns: It is absolutely essential. My time performing on a stage, marathon dancing, moving through chord changes and knowing what rhymes with “truck” informs my never-ending search for the perfect moment. If you watch me when I’m photographing, I’m singing the words or harmonizing, dancing as much as my cameras and the crowd will allow, and memorizing characteristic face and body gestures of the artists … all to get to the core of that particular artist’s expression.
Clubland: What is your Valley history? How did you end up here, when did you leave, and what made you return?
Parker-Burns: I came to the Valley in the spring of 1989. I was and forever will be a Butterfielder, and many of my Valley connections thirty or so years later are from that time (The Unband, Connolly Ryan, The Aloha Steamtrain, Electric Carnival, Terry Jenoure, etc). I graduated with a BFA in Painting in 1994, worked for a few years at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, and then returned to the area in 1996. I met my wife at the Haymarket and three years later we married and left the Valley for a life in the U.S. Foreign Service: two delightful daughters and jobs in Taipei, Taiwan; Accra, Ghana; Krakow, Poland; Kathmandu, Nepal; Kampala, Uganda; and the Washington, D.C. area.
After 22 years of those excitements, my wife and I have amicably gone our separate ways and we needed a “home base” for our daughters … after searching all over the U.S., I made the obvious choice of the Valley and in particular, Easthampton.
When I was living in Uganda with my family, our relationship therapist asked us to close our eyes and think of a place where you felt totally connected and had a sense of purpose and a sense of joy. The second that my eyelids shut, I was transported to Luthier’s Co-op in Easthampton. I had been there over a year before and the experience always stuck with me.
In returning to the U.S. and getting my bearings, I spent a great deal of time photographing and listening to all the music that went down at that magic listening room. I talked the owner, Steve Baer, into letting me replace all the large posters of famous male rock and folk artists who had never played at Luthier’s with my black-and-white images of all the super-talented people who actually had played at Luthier’s. Yeah, that cemented me staying in the area when I could be a part of something like that.
Clubland: Any excitements? And what would you like people to know about your photos/art?
Parker-Burns: I’m excited about this year’s Millpond.Live series as well as my continued work with all of the events by Laudable Productions (Kyle Homstead and Cassandra Holden) … they are committed to creating community through their productions. I had my first Green River Festival and have fallen in love with how that is put together. I love my music photography but would love to meet other photographers in the Valley doing a similar thing.
I would love to put together a written and photographic history of music in the Valley and don’t know of anyone out there who has all the moments I missed. I would also love to sum up my 17 years of living overseas in words and pictures. The really big excitement, honestly, is this feeling of starting all over from where I was 20 years ago and taking everything I’ve learned with living around the world and finding a good home for it here in the Valley. I’m excited about being with people who want to collaborate with me and whatever happens next.