In the backstage

There’s a kind of quiet tension in the way they lean against the wall. No people in sight. No instruments visible. Just the outlines of music, sleeping inside their forms. As a photographer, that’s the kind of silence you try to listen to.

The room was dark, lit only from one side. The light caught the curve of one case and slipped off the edge of the other. Texture came forward. Shape. Memory. You could almost hear the faint creak of clasps, the echo of strings long since gone quiet.

Sometimes the most expressive shots come when nothing is happening. No performance, no sound—just the pause in between. These cases weren’t discarded. They were waiting. For rehearsal, for a late set, for someone to come back and pick them up again.

What struck me most was how personal they looked. Not factory new or stage-polished. One battered, the other worn smooth. Both bearing signs of use, of travel, of having been opened and closed hundreds of times. You start to imagine the stories inside: the first gigs, the broken strings, the last songs played before the lid shut for the night.

This frame didn’t need a caption at the time. But if it did, it might’ve said just one word: soon.