Music has always had furniture. The record player, the radio, the stack of vinyl and the careful arrangement of speakers once occupied rooms with the confidence now granted to almost invisible technology.
The archive contains 220 unique photographs across 885 frames devoted to records, compact discs, instruments and audio equipment. Speakers, radios, Walkmans, stereos, headphones and hi-fi systems chart the changing physical life of recorded sound.
Listening as design
Harper's still-life discipline made him a perceptive photographer of technology. Knobs, dials, grilles and cables needed to remain intelligible, but the object also had to suggest experience. A stereo is not exciting because it is a box. It is exciting because a room may change when it is switched on.
Vinyl and compact discs record another transition. Sleeves brought photography and graphic design into the home, while CDs promised a smaller, cleaner modernity. Portable players moved listening from the sitting room to the street.
Music beyond the machine
This collection sits beside Harper's remarkable musician archive, with David Bowie, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney and Wings, Van Morrison, Santana and others. The performer and the playback object are two sides of the same cultural history.
Harper's first sold photograph showed The Who in concert when he was fourteen. Decades later, the archive preserves not only musicians, but the instruments and machines through which audiences encountered them.