Bittersweet Melodies Video Premieres
Apr 9, 2012

The video features the work of Argentinian photographer Irina Werning, who creates new images by juxtaposing people in the present with images from their past. “I love old photos, but I love even more to recreate them,” says Werning. “When I fall in love with a picture I don't stop until I have them in front of me dressed like this doing that thing they were doing. I'm always amazed that they do it.”

Bittersweet Melodies Video Premieres
Apr 9, 2012

The video features the work of Argentinian photographer Irina Werning, who creates new images by juxtaposing people in the present with images from their past. “I love old photos, but I love even more to recreate them,” says Werning. “When I fall in love with a picture I don't stop until I have them in front of me dressed like this doing that thing they were doing. I'm always amazed that they do it.”

Bittersweet Melodies

“Irina Werning is an Argentinian photographer. Someone sent me a link to her work while I was in Big Sur the day that we recorded ‘Bittersweet Melodies.’ The internet was so incredibly slow in Big Sur, if it worked at all, that if you tried to open a photo it would literally do that inch by inch kind of 1980s printer thing. I remember, over the course of a few hours, listening to versions of ‘Bittersweet’ that we had done, a photo someone had sent me was taking forever and slowly loading. By the time the first one loaded and I saw what it was, these photos, these time-lapse, recreated photos, and then another one loaded and another one, slowly, over a few hours I thought ‘These are what this song is about. This is the same thing!’ The video is just her work, a flickering through of her images. There’s nothing to it and yet it’s so moving because her eye on her subjects is so loving.”