The Chair’s challenge 2024/5
- Andrew Crawford
- Sep 6, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 18, 2025
This season for the Club’s Chair’s challenge, which I judge at the AGM in May 2025, I want you to make a record cover. Your photograph therefore will be square and, as this is about photography and not graphic design, I don’t want to see anything in the work that didn’t originate from photography. Text is fine, as long as you photograph it rather than type it! This is one area of photography where artistic intent is more important than technical purity, so feel free to be as creative as you dare.
Your entry should be titled with the name of the real piece of music and the performer(s) (band/orchestra etc) to which it relates. I’ll try to listen to all of the music as I look at the images in the week before judging, so picking one track from an album would probably work best.
I will be looking for record covers that go beyond mere representative depiction of the title or performers of the music. I’d like it to bring out the back story, say something about what the band/composer and music is about or better still look like the music sounds. If you close your eyes as you listen, what do you see…show that to me.
There is a maximum of two entries each, projected, if there are more entries than I can cope with then only your first entry (the one first in your list in PhotoEntry) will be considered. Entries to be submitted via PhotoEntry by 30 April 2025.
For those that missed the presentation on 4 September, here’s my top 5 of album covers to illustrate what I’m looking for and inspire you:
5 - British Steel by Judas Priest from 1980
Photography by Bob Elsdale. Heavy metal and a tough guy photo that goes with the genre. But that’s not why it’s on this list – it’s here because looking at the picture makes my fingers hurt with the imagination of holding a razor blade in this way; and to some ears the music might also be painful, maybe not what Elsdale intended but that’s my rationale.
4 - Absolution by Muse from 2003
Photography by Dan Abbott to a design by Storm Thorgerson. The cover is intriguing, are the shadows of human bodies rising, falling or floating overhead. Their arms are outstretched in Christian symbolism which could go with the Absolution title. However, the backstory for the album is around music, in particular making music, as a cathartic experience and it’s in that sense that the band called it Absolution.
3 - London Calling by The Clash from 1979
Photography by Pennie Smith. The image is of the bass player Paul Simonon smashing his guitar against the stage. Arguably a poor photograph, but nevertheless it shows the anti-establishment ethos and the energy of the band, their music and performance and therefore fits perfectly.
2 - Memoryhouse by Max Richter, BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Rumon Gamba from 2002
Photography by Ania Piesiewicz. Neo classical music. The work is reputed to be about the post Berlin Wall era, and particularly the Balkan Wars. The monochrome image is of a railway platform that I can recognise as typical of Central and Eastern Europe. There is a slightly off-centre vanishing point where many leading lines meet; rotational symmetry of light and dark tones around that vanishing point and repetitive vertical and horizontal features in planking, sleepers, pillars and power cable supports. The music makes heavy use of repetitive ostinato in the mid and bass ranges, matching the repetitive notes in the image and having similarities with the noise and rhythm of a train; high pitched and bass melody lines, which go with the heavy contrast in the image; and there is a gradual crescendo and diminuendo suggestive of approach and departure towards the vanishing point in the image.
1 - Season of Glass by Yoko Ono from 1981
Photography by Yoko Ono. This album was released less than six months after John Lennon was shot in the lobby of the Dakota building, where he and Yoko Ono lived, in New York. The image is of the skyline across Central Park through a glass window in their apartment. In the foreground are John’s blood-stained spectacles and a part filled glass of water on a table with a glossy reflective top. These items refract, fragment and distort the world outside and the image is a metaphor for Ono’s broken and shattered emotions which are also shown through subdued and muted colours. While much of the material on the album predates Lennon’s death, some does not and the whole is seen as a reaction.
All images sourced from The Cover Art Archive via MusicBrainz.
