A photograph + a piece of music

A photograph

Sergei Lobovikov

The Widow’s Pillow

c. 1900

Bromoil and varnish

Mikhail Golosovskii Collection

Krasnogorsk, Russia.

+

A piece of music

Leoš Janáček

Folk Nocturnes : I. Hey, There Was a Maid She Mowed the Grass

Composition 1906

Recording 1958

Josef Hala, Prague Philharmonic Choir, Jan Kühn

Because of my interest in both photography and music I will occasionally make some combinations between the two here. Today, both the photo and the song are from around 1900. Both are difficult to grasp – the photograph is blurry, the song in sung in Czech, a language unfamiliar to me. I can decipher that they share roughly the same subject: A girl or woman, living a life of manual labor, working with grass and straw in the fields. Both the photograph and the song take you to times long gone and places far away. They radiate calm and melancholy.