Architecture In Music, A Journey Inside Extraordinary Instruments

For the last several years I have been creating something that, at first glance, does not seem possible:

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Fully funded, and now being made even better.

Thanks to the remarkable support for this campaign, I’m now able to invest in professional editorial help and further upgrades to the design and print quality of the book.
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These photographs are not concert halls, cathedrals, subway tunnels, or vast architectural spaces. They are the hidden interiors of musical instruments, photographed from the inside using custom-adapted medical optics and painstaking high-resolution techniques. What appears monumental is often only a few centimetres across. A violin becomes a grand chamber. A flute becomes a glowing passage of precious metal. A piano action becomes an intricate mechanical city.

The Superoctave Pipes of St Marks Pipe Organ

This series is called Architecture In Music, and it has grown into one of the most widely seen art-photo projects of its kind, reaching audiences around the world through newspapers, magazines, galleries, orchestras, and collectors. But until now, these images have never had a permanent home worthy of the care, detail, and wonder that went into making them.

This book is that home:

Large-format 300 × 300 mm (12 x 12 inch) hardcover coffee table book
Presented in a beautiful hard slipcase
Features 48 stunning photographs from Architecture In Music
Printed on high-GSM art paper
Includes behind-the-scenes insights and instrument profiles
Layflat binding so no part of the image disappears into the fold
Designed as a premium collector’s piece for lovers of music, photography, and design

Gobal Acclaim

Architecture In Music has become one of the most published art-photo series on earth, with more than 20 million prints in newspapers and magazines alone, and hundreds of millions of shares online. Yet until now, the collection has never been brought together in one place. This book changes that.

Architecture In Music on the Kelly Clarkson Show — A wonderful and slightly surreal moment, joining The Kelly Clarkson Show to talk about Architecture In Music. It was a huge honour to share the series with Kelly and her team, who were absolutely lovely to work with.

Now Fully Funded, and the hard work has begun.

Thanks to the extraordinary response to this campaign, Architecture In Music is now fully funded, and I’m already hard at work with designers, printers, and editors to make this book as beautiful as it deserves to be.

The strong support for the project means I’m able to bring in professional editorial help to refine the text to the standard the book deserves. After all, I’m a photographer and a cellist, not a writer, I only have so many strings to my bow.

It has also allowed me to add a number of upgrades to the production itself, from improved design details to extra refinements in print quality. In other words, more bells and whistles, although admittedly this book contains photographs of neither bells nor whistles, which may be something I need to address one day.

Why a book, and why now?

Architecture In Music was never meant to be experienced on a phone screen.

These are photographs built from hundreds, sometimes thousands, of individual images, carefully blended together to reveal impossible levels of detail from front to back. They are works that reward time, close looking, and physical scale. They invite you to pause and gradually realise what you are seeing.

This is designed as a large 300 x 300 mm hardback coffee table book, roughly the size of a classic record sleeve, and presented in a beautifully designed hard slipcase. That generous format allows many of the photographs to be reproduced across sweeping double-page spreads, giving them a scale and presence that simply cannot be experienced on a phone screen. Instead of being reduced to something small and fleeting, the images become immersive, physical, and architectural, inviting you to slow down and truly step inside them.

A beautifully produced coffee table book is the format these images have been waiting for.

It will bring together the strongest works from the series in one place, from rare violins by Stradivari, Guadagnini and Amati, to grand pianos, flutes, clarinets, guitars, percussion, and more. Some are world-famous historical instruments. Some are modern masterpieces. All of them contain hidden worlds that are normally inaccessible, even to the musicians who play them.

Inside a Stradivarius Violin from 1717, one of the world's finest string instruments.

This book is not simply a catalogue of photographs. It is a celebration of craftsmanship, sound, history, illusion, and curiosity. It is a chance to stand inside the unseen spaces where music begins.

How these images are made

Creating these photographs is a slow and highly specialised process.

To photograph inside instruments, I use custom-adapted medical endoscopes and probe optics attached to high-resolution cameras, often working through tiny openings only millimetres wide. Lighting must be designed from scratch for each instrument. Focus is razor thin. Heat has to be controlled carefully. In many cases I shoot hundreds of frames at different focus distances, then blend them together so that every surface, from the nearest wood grain to the farthest curve of the body, appears in crisp detail.

Author Charles Brooks photographing a 1717 Stradivarius Violin in Melbourne, Australia

The final result is something that feels both documentary and dreamlike. These are real spaces, real materials, real instruments, but seen in a way no human eye normally could.

That balance is at the heart of the project. The images feel surreal, yet everything in them is true.

Tambourines, crafted by Guy du Blêt, Melbourne

A new way of seeing musical instruments

Musicians know that every instrument has a voice and a personality. What fascinated me was the idea that every instrument also has an interior landscape, shaped by centuries of craft, engineering, repair, and use.

Inside a violin, tiny tool marks and worn surfaces tell stories about the hand that made it. Inside a piano, layers of precision mechanics reveal how touch becomes sound. Inside a wind instrument, reflections and colour transform a narrow bore into something almost architectural.

These photographs change the scale of our relationship with instruments. Suddenly we are no longer holding them, we are entering them.

That shift in perspective is what people respond to most strongly. There is a moment of confusion, then recognition, then wonder. That is the experience I want this book to preserve.

The best of the collection

This book will present the finest images from the Architecture In Music series in a form designed to do them justice.

It will include many of the most celebrated photographs from the project, along with carefully written accompanying text that gives each instrument context, history, and technical insight. Among them are rare and extraordinary instruments photographed in collaboration with leading musicians, collectors, luthiers, and institutions. These include some of the most revered names in musical history, alongside remarkable contemporary instruments and unexpected discoveries from across the musical world.

The sequencing of the book will be designed to create a visual journey, moving between families of instruments, scales, materials, and moods. Some images feel cathedral-like. Some feel industrial. Some are intimate and luminous. Together they reveal an entire hidden universe.

More than pictures

What makes this project meaningful to me is not just the visual surprise.

These instruments carry human history inside them. They have been built, repaired, performed, transported, cherished, and passed from hand to hand across generations. Marks left by makers and restorers become part of the final image. A repair becomes a scar. A curve of timber becomes a gesture. A polished chamber becomes a memory of sound.

In that sense, this project is also about preservation.

It is about looking carefully at objects of extraordinary cultural value and revealing details that would otherwise remain unseen. It is about showing not only beauty, but workmanship. Not only spectacle, but story.

A heavily repaired Chappuy Violin, Paris circa 1770

Stretch Goal #1 - $60'000

Thanks to the incredible level of support shown so far, I managed to reach this stretch goal before I had even published it...

I have commissioned Italian artist Antonietta Positano to create two original works for the book. These will appear as the front and back endpapers. Using two of my photographs as inspiration, she will reinterpret them in her distinctive architectural sketch style, bringing just a little more of the “Architecture” into Architecture In Music.

Best of all, this upgrade will be included for all backers at no additional cost.

Antonietta and I were both featured by My Modern Met, a prestigious arts publication that has played an important role in the success of this project. It is genuinely exciting to bring another artist’s work into the book. Endpapers are so often left blank, so it feels very special to fill them with designs by a fellow lover of music and architecture.

You can see some of Antonietta’s magnificent work below, read about her at My Modern Met, and you may also want to follow her on Instagram at @antonietta.positano

Why Kickstarter matters

This book deserves to be made properly.

I am working with an experienced book designer to create a volume that feels refined, immersive, and worthy of the photographs themselves. The goal is a substantial, beautifully printed coffee table book with rich reproduction, generous scale, and the kind of presence that invites people to return to it again and again.

Kickstarter will allow me to produce this book to the standard it needs, rather than compromising on materials, print quality, or presentation. Your support will help fund the design, colour work, proofing, printing, and logistics required to turn this into a finished object of real quality.

Backing this campaign is not simply pre-ordering a book. It is helping bring a significant body of work into its definitive form.

Why back this project?

Because books like this are increasingly rare.

Because in a world of fleeting images and endless scrolling, some work deserves to exist physically.

Because these photographs were made with patience, curiosity, and technical obsession, and they ask to be seen slowly.

Because music lovers, photographers, makers, designers, and anyone drawn to hidden beauty will find something remarkable here.

And because Kickstarter is the only reason independent projects like this get to exist at their full potential.

About me

Before becoming a photographer, I spent twenty years as a professional classical musician, performing in different parts of the world. That background shaped the way I see instruments, not as objects alone, but as living tools of expression with personalities, histories, and voices of their own.

Architecture In Music grew from that dual perspective, part musician, part image-maker. It combines my understanding of instruments from the inside out with years of experimentation in photography, optics, lighting, and post-production. What began as an unusual idea has become my life’s work, and one that has connected with millions of people worldwide.

This book is the culmination of that journey so far.

Help me bring it to life

If these images have ever made you stop, look twice, and feel a sense of wonder, I would love your support.

By backing this campaign, you are helping create a book that reveals the hidden interiors of extraordinary instruments in a way that has never been seen before. You are helping preserve years of work in a form that can be held, shared, gifted, and returned to for years to come.

Thank you for being here, and for helping bring Architecture In Music to the page.

Architecture In Music

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