The past few months have been busy for The Police guitarist Andy Summers. Maybe you've heard about the band's more-than-50-city reunion tour. On top of that, Summers is also celebrating a book release and touring exhibition of black-and-white photographs he took during the band's early days.
It all started when his friend Jill Furmanovsky, founder of Rockarchive.com, a print publishing company specializing in historic rock-and-roll photographs by the world's top rock photographers, suggested they do a book together of The Police photography. Furmanovsky, a well-known rock photographer herself, had shot many of the band's early publicity photos. But when Furmanovsky saw how many photos Summers had - more than 25,000 negatives - she encouraged him to
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create a book of his own. "As we got into it, I realized I had a significant body of work that was very personal," Summers said. "I then dug out my old journals and added notes to go along with the photos." Once the book was underway and the group launched its reunion tour, Summers had the idea to put together a traveling photo exhibition to coincide with the tour. Sponsored by Rockarchive.com with HP as a full-solution printing partner, the I'll Be Watching You: Inside the Police 1980-83 photo exhibition features 38 large-format images from the book, each produced with
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Although music was his first passion, Summers has been fascinated with photographic imagery since he was a child. His older brother was a camera nut who was always showing off his latest gadgets. As a teenager, Summers loved the stark, black-and-white compositions of European filmmakers like Goddard, Truffaut, Fellini and Bergman. His dream was to write the kind of music that would befit those images. But it wasn't until 1979, while touring with The Police, that he bought a Nikon camera and began to take photography seriously. Eventually, he became expert and refined his own style. "Photography is like improvising music," Summers said. "You look through the lens and enter a zone where visual information starts to come to you in a different way. It's parallel to that moment on stage when you are waiting for a musical moment to click and then you are just sort of in it." Summers kept a camera with him at all times during the early days of his photo explorations. He even rigged one up on stage that he could operate from his guitar pedal board. "I got a lot of great photographs that way," Summers said. "But it was a bit obsessive." Thanks to his obsession, I'll Be Watching You takes us behind the scenes with one of the biggest rock groups of the 1980s.
"Photography is like improvising music. You look through the lens and enter a zone where visual information starts to come to you in a different way." Andy Summers fine art photographer, guitarist for The Police
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Each stop along the I'll Be Watching You photo exhibition tour will feature an exclusive opening night event. Digital printing company RT Associates, Inc., used the
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HP Indigo Press 5000 to print invitations, an exclusive catalog of the show and certificates of authenticity for print buyers. "The Indigo press 5000 was great," said Bob Radzis, president of RT Associates. "Andy approved the quality right off the bat. We didn't have to adjust the colors or anything. The press enabled us to meet the high expectations of the artist even under the pressure of a same-day turnaround."
"I thought the catalogs were a knockout," Summers said. "It was a very hip little sidebar to the book, and everyone was blown away by the quality. It was a brilliant job." RT Associates also produced large-format publicity posters and banners for the exhibition, printed on the
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"It's revolutionary. The fact that this printer has the color management system built into it is a huge benefit." Andrew Behla fine art printmaker, Behla Design and Consulting
Summers worked with fine art printmaker Andrew Behla of Behla Design and Consulting to produce the
photographic prints for the exhibition. Behla had been present for the unveiling of HP's new Designjet Z series printer and thought it would be ideal for getting the print quality he knew Summers was after. Behla took high-resolution scans of Summers' original negatives, then used the HP Designjet Z3100 printer to reproduce Summers' moody black-and-white photographs. The printer's four-black ink system delivers smooth transitions, subtle shading and a full range of gray tones. "I think printing black and white is one of the biggest challenges in fine art printmaking, but the Z series printer's use of four black inks, along with
Ideal for printing exceptional photographs with vivid, true-to-life colors, rich blacks and sharp details. It has a consistent gloss uniformity and produces long-lasting photos when used with HP pigment inks.
HP Professional Satin Photo Paper, has an incredible look," Behla said. Summers agrees. "I love the blacks in the prints. I was kind of knocked out by them, actually." Behla also appreciated that the printer has both photo black and matte black inks available at all times. "We could switch papers without having to switch ink sets," Behla said. "That allowed us to try different papers easily and make comparisons." The HP Designjet Z3100's
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embedded spectrophotometer enabled Behla to calibrate the colors quickly and easily to get consistent results using HP Professional Satin Photo Paper and HP Vivera Pigment Inks. The result? High-impact prints that brought out the richness of the photographs. "That, to me, is amazing," Behla said. "It's revolutionary. The fact that this printer has the
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