Kunming, Yunnan Province, China

As some of you know, over the last year I have taken several photography workshops to help me get beyond my self-taught, working-on-my-own, vacuum. One of the (many) things I‘ve discovered while at these workshops is that some people have a fear of approaching and photographing strangers. During my travels I realised that this is certainly not one of my issues. I take complete pleasure in going up to people and striking up conversations. Some of my images are informal street photographs but many are straight “portraits,” taken after asking permission or at least having been acknowledged by the subject. The latter approach is my preferred way of working.

I believe that I reach out to strangers with humility, curiosity, and openness. I have no qualms about asking someone who captures my interest if I may photograph her. I tend to spend a little time chatting with the person as s/he becomes more comfortable with the idea of being photographed. This actually makes the interaction more congenial and collaborative which is how I like it. There are those who say no but then, of course, there are those who simply say yes and allow me to shoot away, without particularly wanting to chat.

Bahia, Brasil

My inclination when taking these portraits is to get very close to the person. I have an M43 camera and utilize the 24mm and 90 mm full frame lens equivalents. The first enables me to get close to my subjects yet shows them in the context of their surroundings. The second lens lets me get wholly closer. The 24mm lens facilitates a story (should the viewer want to read one) because it is a wide one; there is no need to step back to get the background and diminish the subject while doing so. I believe that by getting closer to the person I create a more powerful image.

Camden, Maine, U.S.

Kunming, Yunnan Province, China

As I spend time with my subjects I try my best to follow these simple rules of my own making: be honest and direct with people, and always be respectful. By doing this I am being true to  myself and feel I am inching a little closer to the emotional lives of the people I photograph.

Outside of Xingping, Guangxi Province, China

Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.

Bahia, Brasil

Near the Rio Grande, New Mexico, United States

The other day I took the book, Landmark: The Fields of Landscape Photography by William A. Ewing, out of the library. In his preface the author says,

I am always amazed… how little interest is shown in what are now easily accessible landscapes – by train, plane, or car – places that most of our ancestors could never have dreamt of seeing first-hand. Recently I found my self looking down at the Northwest Passage from the comfort of a jumbo jet en route from Vancouver to London, arcing over the Pole. The scene was lit by moonlight and the landscape was vividly clear. Not much more than a hundred years ago, this passage was still elusive – one was known to exist, but not precisely where. Here we were floating right over it, feet up, drinks in hand. And yet my fellow passengers had their shades drawn, glued to the apparently far more alluring scenes on their screens in front of them. (I have noted how airlines routinely advertise travel by showing passengers sleeping blissfully – a promise of total sensory deprivation; traversing actual landscapes is seen as inconvenient, the less seen the better.)

How I wish planes did not have window shades, all together. People who prefer darkness could be given eye masks. The rest of us would happily look outside at the land- and cloud-scapes. There’s as much to see at 36,000 feet above ground as there is on terra firma. As for me, I just want to watch out the window as I cross the earth.

The Rio Grande, New Mexico, United States

I have never considered landscape photography something I “do” nor a genre in which I am seriously interested. Yet, as I review my images of the last few years, I notice that I have taken my fair share of landscape photographs. Apparently, not only do I like “being” in the natural world, I like taking pictures of it from time to time. Looking through Ewing’s book, and other photography books I have, it is evident that the groundwork for landscape photography is as varied as the world itself and that imagery of landscape includes all forms of the man-made. Sometimes, my photographs are devoid of human figures but they are, nonetheless, often pregnant with human presence.

Kampot, Bokor Hill, Cambodia

The Great Wall, China

Route 1, Road to Vik, Iceland

Kunming, Yunnan Province, China

Salton Sea, California, United States

Salt Flats, Kampot, Cambodia

Geauga County, Ohio

I am voyeur and I LOVE watching people go about their daily business. At night, I adore looking through open windows into people’s homes. I feel as if I am there with them (at least, almost). And this is why I keep my own shades down!

Perhaps this is why i am so taken by photography; photography is, after all, a voyeuristic medium. I like to look and am terribly curious. The origin of “voyeur” comes from the french, VOIR: to see. In fact, I have found myself looking so hard at both people and the environment around me that sometime I imagine others think I am staring. A spy or stalker I am not. If I were to be allowed in – into a home, into a soul – I would go. I want to open myself up so that I may dig deep inside, look, see, understand, and feel.

Charles Harbutt wrote in Travelog, “I became a photographer because photographers did have to be wherever they wanted to take pictures… And because there was some connection, inherent in the nature of the medium, between that place and its picture. And the viewers, despite any pitfalls or roadblocks put in their way, could still to some extent be there too. This has always struck me as somewhat amazing. That magic little black box enables one to leave, in a small way and for a short while, one’s own time and space and to occupy, maybe only superficially, another time and space: a then and there that really existed as well as a here and now. Photographs are both real images and imaged realities.”

Geauga County, Ohio

Photographs permit us to “get in.” As a photographer I get a glimpse of the world as it presents itself. I allow my surroundings to wash over me; I stay as open and observant as I can – feeling with my heart and responding with my eye to the camera. I have only just begun to internalize this and thus believe that I am at a critical transition point. I concentrate on that which truly grabs me. This may seem obvious but really only comes to me when I do not give my attention to it. It is not easily put into practise; and it is a complete liberation. To have figured out that some of my “stronger” images (and the subjects which attract me), are of ordinary, everyday life, is a complete revelation. The details of the mundane call to me. They always have, in fact. I used to want to run away from it. Now I need to get close to the places and way people live.

Self-Portrait

Having both a blog and website allows me to put my images together so that I may develop and heighten my work, one photograph at a time. With the blog, I typically have just taken the photographs not long before. Posting them (with text for augmentation), provides an almost-instant gratification as well as a chance to show off and receive immediate feedback. By contrast, my website is a long term investment – a repository for some of the pieces I am most proud.

Over the last month I have spent much time analyzing the projects (books and websites) of other photographers, trying to understand what they have done to structure their images in progression. These past ten days or so, I have been re-developing my website. Looking at photographs I took over a year or two ago (many not looked at in that period of time) has made me see the work in a new light and has given me the distance to be more critical and objective. At the same time I found a few over-looked treasures. In re-doing my website I have come to realise that sequencing is something of an art – in which intuition plays a role. Each photograph has to stand on its own yet also work as part of the whole so that there is a rhythm or flow (so connections are made from one image to another).

So much for the blog and onto the website: tamargranovsky.com