The First Portrait I Ever Took
The first portraits I ever shot, playing with light and shadows. How does a line (re)define a face? Los Angeles, 1995 |
Going through an old hard drive I found pictures, which I haven't seen in years. It's almost as good of a feeling as going through old negatives, but not quiet.
Everything here was shot on 35mm film between 1995 and 2002. When I took some of these I wasn't even old enough to vote. I made the jump to digital relatively late in the game, sometime in 2008 with a Nikon D300. Looking back now I wonder if I have actually devolved in some aspects by shooting digitally. Have my aesthetic priorities been dictated too much by the medium, shouldn't it be the other way around?
I see the creative and technical questions I was contemplating back then were similar to an ideal I still strive for and I'm surprised at how visible by photographic influences were.
The first portraits I ever shot, playing with light and shadows. How does a line (re)define a face? Los Angeles, 1995 |
My first still life, 35mm film in 1995 |
Joshua in the bathtub. Starting in 2002 I began to explore environmental portraits. Sankt Anton, Austria 2002 |
Santa Clause Island. Starting in 2001 I began to really explore environmental portraits, it took time to find the courage to point a camera at a stranger. Turkey 2002 |
Between 2001 and 2004 I traveled and lived in various places around the world, I met lifelong friends and learned much about life and myself. They were also the years in which I built the foundation to my photographic style. I pointed the camera at everything that interested me and began to press my own boundaries like a two year old child to discover what I could and couldn't do, what I liked and didn't like.
I'd like to return to that level of curiosity...in everything in life.