Kai Schäfer presents WORLDRECORDS at the HENI Gallery

About

WORLDRECORDS celebrates some of the very best and most distinctive albums in music history, each one beautifully captured on an iconic turntable. Featuring albums such as David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, Kraftwerk’s Tour de France, Miles Davis’s A Kind of Blue, Prince’s Purple Rain and The Clash’s London Calling, the photographic series is a visually sumptuous homage to music, art and design.

Commemorating the art of analogue, Kai Schäfer’s sharp, oversized images perfectly encapsulate the details and nuances of the vinyl and the record players.

The project, which started in 2010, developed after Schäfer constructed a unique lighting system to illuminate the records in a way that supresses reflections. The precise approach – down to the last detail – is a technical marvel, magnifying each groove and label with the careful consideration that most vinyl collectors adhere to.

The accompanying book includes a foreword by Peter Hook, of Joy Division and New Order fame and text by art and music writer Michael Bracewell, who writes, “WORLDRECORDS is as much a celebration of iconic turntable design as it is a statement about the history of rock and pop music and our relationship to it. In their own unselfconscious way, each of the WORLDRECORDS becomes a cultural historical statement, charting the way in which Pop became the defining symbol of the Mass Age.”

Schäfer says: “WORLDRECORDS is a tribute to analogue acoustic art; a homage to the warmest, perhaps most sensitive type of sound carrier. In a way – that makes the photo series so special – it is also a private time machine to the spectator: music as an impulse to remember bits and pieces of one’s personal history, a release of former thoughts and feelings. The soundtrack of your life.” 

Kai Schäfer lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. WORLDRECORDS combines his two passions: photography and music. This series of photographs has been exhibited in galleries in both New York and Los Angeles.

The exhibition is open Monday – Saturday 10am – 6pm. Pricing available upon request. 

WORLDRECORDS is published on 31 May to coincide with the London exhibition, RRP £25. For more information please visit www.henipublishing.com