Live music in Orlando knows few bounds. It spans moodily lit dive bars, couch-lined living rooms, arenas, galleries, skateparks and storied concert halls. No matter the production values, or purposeful DIY lack thereof, it remains loud but fleeting.
Shows end, the music fades, crowds trickle out, venues shutter for the night.
What’s left is silence. But that’s exactly where Hannah Howells finds symphonies.
The Orlando music photographer has spent the better half of this decade documenting live music both born in and traveling through Florida. She’s a mainstay in the city’s music bubble, immortalizing shows moments at a time, with a pointed emphasis on the artists and fans that make them what they are.
Now, her work gets an analog debut with the exhibition Silence Is a Symphony, on display at CityArts in downtown Orlando Jan. 15 through Feb. 14.
The project’s name was born from a song of the same title by Tampa emo-hardcore band Novely, an ensemble Howells has shot regularly over the past two years. Its namesake reflects the exhibition’s roots in DIY, underground and the sometimes-unseen parts of local music Howells documents.
Photos featured in Silence Is a Symphony represent not only big-name tour stops — Twenty One Pilots, Flipturn, Speed, Show Me the Body, Beach Fossils, Minus the Bear — but also Florida-born bands. Add to that an ever-overlapping web of Orlando bands — Flowers for Emily, Soap Box Derby, 0 Miles Per Hour, Watts, Miracle — many of whom Howells has worked with for years.
But it is the Tampa band Novely who became the unofficial focus of the exhibition after what Howells says was a simple request made years ago that helped shape how she shoots today.
“I vividly remember them telling me when I talked to them to shoot for the first time they were like, ‘Can you just make sure to get a picture of all four of us?’”
They wanted to see shots of the scene, not just individual close-ups. This ask made something click in Howells’ brain about how to take photos of musicians for musicians and the people they play for.
“As much as it’s about the band, it’s also about the people,” she tells Orlando Weekly. “Which I think is also another important part about the show. I want to focus it on the people that make local music what it is.”
Personal connections of a similar variety that have informed her work from her start in the industry. What began as a self-proclaimed fangirl taking photos at concerts has morphed into a photographer shooting friends and colleagues.
“A lot of the drive for me is that I want to give my friends a good outside perception of what their music is,” she says. “I like being able to convey what it feels like to be there.”
Early in her career, Howells was often the only person who wasn’t already cemented in the industry — or wasn’t a man — shooting a particular show. Immersing herself and connecting with the people on the stage, large or small, helped her to release some of the stigma around the idea of the overly entitled concert photographer.
Howells says she prefers a fly-on-the-wall approach, but there’s little chance any other fly on the wall cares as much about the music and community as she does. Even in the spaces she’s working in, she’s often still thinking about her role in the overarching atmosphere.
“I don’t want to ever take away from a show. So, sometimes I’m a little more subdued with where I’m shooting, what I’m doing,” Howells says. “I won’t get a shot because I don’t want to get in somebody else’s way of experiencing.”
It’s a sentiment that only further solidifies her as a musician’s music photographer.
And the community Howells documents for isn’t confined to musicians and their fans. Local arts heavyweight (and occasional OW contributor) Kyle Eagle curated Silence Is a Symphony, and help with the show is attributed to the late arts mainstay and Snap curator Patrick Kahn.
Howells uses the phrase “support system” to describe the people behind her, both those who helped create the exhibition and the people in the bands she spotlights. The community that’s rallied behind her has helped her to recontextualize her work amid a societal emphasis on social media praise.
She hopes Silence Is a Symphony counters that and offers a more tactile, permanent glimpse into her work and Florida’s arts landscape. But more than anything else, Howells hopes viewers go on to support local music.
The exhibition may be silent, but even still, it’ll be deafening.
Silence Is a Symphony’s monthlong run in CityArts’ Austin Commercial Gallery kicks off with a free opening night reception Thursday. Prints will be available for purchase. The exhibition runs through Feb. 14.
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This article appears in Jan. 14-20, 2026.
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Chloe Greenberg
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