Inside Swans: photographing Michael Gira for The New Yorker

I rarely shoot musicians. But when Sasha Frere-Jones asked me to photograph Michael Gira for his music column in The New Yorker, I did what you should do next time Swans play your town: just go.

Michael Gira by Nikola Tamindzic for The New Yorker

Gira is a singular presence — intense, unflinching, and deeply committed to his art. Photographing him was less about capturing a pose and more about documenting a force.

Later that afternoon, Sasha and I were sitting with Michael in his kitchen. The light was starting to fall sideways. Conversation drifted, as it does, and at some point Michael asked if we wanted to hear something he was working on. He led us into a small back room — no ceremony, just a quiet invitation. He picked up an acoustic guitar, sat down, and started to play.

The song was Kirsten Supine, inspired by Kirsten Dunst’s moonlit scenes in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia. Michael sat with his acoustic guitar in a small, dim room and began to play, no introduction, no explanation. The music was sparse, slow, and achingly beautiful, like something pulled down from the air. A minute or so in, I suddenly caught myself — I had been listening so closely I’d forgotten to process what was happening — here was Michael Gira, whose albums had remade me time and time again since I was sixteen, in his house, in his room, playing a not-yet-released song for an audience of two: Sasha and me. Just that voice, and a guitar.

It was a moment I never imagined I’d have. And I’ll carry it with me always — the weight of that voice, the stillness in the room, the gift of being let in.

Swans’ album To Be Kind is out now, another in a long line of their uncompromising works.

You can revisit Sasha’s column for which this portrait was commissioned here.