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Before embarking on the complete re-design and re-branding of one of my most cherished albums of all time, The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails, I first had to make a decision on the visual direction in which I wanted to take it. As soon as I decided that I wanted to start this project, I knew that I wanted it to be photography heavy as this is how the original album cover and branding was achieved (by the great David Carson in 1999). Throughout this collection of images, I aimed to create an intense visual juxtaposition between the pureness and order of the natural world and the chaos and anguish of the man made world. I shot a considerable amount of 35mm film for this visual exploration, over 6 rolls in less than two weeks to be exact.
Whether to shoot digital images or 35mm for this project wasn’t even a question in my mind, it was always going to be 35mm. This is because the grain, strong contrast, rich colours and the generally unpredictable nature of analog photography binds perfectly with the chaotic, dark and violent themes in which I wanted to explore visually for this album. During these two weeks of analog photography, I focused on depicting the purity yet vulnerability of the natural world and really wanted to create a strong juxtaposition between that and the stringent, artificial world, focusing particularly on brutalist style architecture. After taking over 200, 35mm photos and having them developed as digital scans, I noticed that the visual theme which I aimed to explore was perfectly on target. I then spent about a week filtering, categorising and editing my photos. During this week I focused mainly on creating obscure compositions while also experimenting with colour and clarity, using Adobe Lightroom to carry this out.
