Today's entry marks the beginning of what I hope will be an ongoing feature here on the blog in which photographers give a little insight into specific photographs.
While I appreciate the personal connection and space that's created when there is no caption info or context, I also think that many people, myself included, are interested in the relationship that a photographer has with their pictures. They remind me that photographs are taken from the real world after a series of interesting and very personal decisions. I love hearing photographers talk about their work, their processes. Not necessarily to solve the photographic puzzle, but to expand the understanding of the photograph.
Matthew Gamber graciously took a little time to would tell me a little about two of his photos.
"I had just started shooting color film, only having done it for a class a few years earlier. In the meantime, I made a decision that only items suited for color should be shot that way, meaning that you shouldn't use color materials unless you could make it look like a painting. I also believed in leaving things as they were and not setting it up. With this philosophy, you don't get many images. I wouldn't have known how to set up the lighting for images like this. But, the photographs that you do make, I find I can relate emotionally to not only the making of the photograph but to the person, object, or atmosphere depicted in that photography.
The lighting is all from daylight, reflecting differently in all the rooms: the yellowed kitchen blinds, the shaded area of the front door, the peach curtains in the upstairs. I had moved furniture to focus on how that light fell on the split level architecture. The scene is where I grew up, and the house was changing to reflect new needs for the house. The window behind the camera was later bricked, removing the main light from the room. It was never used as the living room again."
"I admired the photographs shot by someone who was trying to shoot with a view camera like it was a point and shoot camera. The bulk of that camera often dictates the situations that you can photograph, but I liked the idea of trying to deny that fact. I spent a couple of years trying to mimic those images using the same method - trying to match not only the look, the looseness of the those images, but the openness to possibilities.
This was shot in an Elks lodge in my hometown at midnight on New Year's Eve. It was the one of the most exclusive places to be that night.
I preset the focus and tilted the lens so something on the negative would be in focus. It was the only shot, not because it was the perfect moment, but because it was the only one I could shoot. Part of the idea was about accepting outcomes, whatever the results. My images, though, never matched the quality of those I was trying to mimic. In retrospect, the images I tried to emulate had an emotional openness because of the technique. I look at this image and see it as a desire for openness, without really obtaining it or even allowing it. Printing the result was the compromise, trying to find it in the editing, but not the shooting."
