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Still Moving: Photographers’ Music Videos

When the photographer Roger Ballen’s video for “I Fink U Freeky,” by Die Antwoord, came out earlier this month, I watched it over and over again, amazed by how it brought his still images to life while also conveying the personality of the band. It got me thinking about other video collaborations between photographers and musicians, some of them surprising, others made by photographers who are prolific in the form. Here’s a selection of ten, all made by directors with large bodies of photographic work, along with comments from most of the artists.

1. Die Antwoord, “I Fink U Freeky,” directed by Roger Ballen and Ninja.

Ballen told me that he’s known the band members Ninja and Yo-Landi for years, and that he’s long wanted to make a video for them. “Unfortunately, they were living in Cape Town and I in Johannesburg, and as a result the logistics never seemed to have worked out,” he said. On New Year’s Eve, though, he took a photograph of Die Antwoord for the New York Times Magazine, and they decided to finally make it happen. Two weeks later, the video for “I Fink U Freeky” was in the can. “We started with my photographs for ideas and then mimicked them in the sets,” Ballen told me. “Most of the sets started with almost a ‘Roger Ballen still life’ and then expanded on the particular theme cinematically. In many aspects, a great work of cinema contains an abundance of powerful still images.”

- On our Photo Booth blog, Jessie Wender looks at ten music videos by photographers: http://nyr.kr/xcVWH8