In this assignment, you will use a song by Tom Waits as your guide to making a photographic response to a very visual, audio, experience. I have selected a song from his album "Rain Dogs" for this assignment, Ninth and Hennepin. The goal of this assignment is not to literally reproduce the song as a photograph but to use the audio work as a point of departure. You can find this in iTunes or other on line sources. Here's a note that might assist you:
In a 1985 interview with Spin magazine, Tom states that the imagery found in this song is drawn mostly from his observations of New York, though the actual named location - Ninth Street and Hennepin Avenue - is in Minneapolis. The location "Ninth and Hennepin" understandably stuck with Waits because he was in an all-night donut shop when he was caught in the middle of a pimp war that involved live ammunition firing into his booth. Tom alludes to this with the line, "All the donuts have names like prostitutes."
In support of the album's lyrical themes, "Ninth and Hennepin" is presented as a place of transition, not a home or a destination of any kind. The lyric says of the song's characters: "They all started out with bad directions." The broken umbrellas symbolize failed attempts at shelter by the corner's inhabitants.
More symbols of travel and rootlessness found in this lyric: the smell of diesel, horses, the evening train, being lost.
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