Personal Involvement with Photography

I think my personal interest in photography started at a really young age, I have memories of looking at pictures and feeling the desire to create something similarly beautiful on my own, from around the age of five or six but I think that it became more conscious when I was around ten or eleven (as in that’s when I started to steal my moms camera to take annoying pictures with my friends), and that desire sort of evolved from that point. When I see something really idealistic or beautiful to me I sort of stop and take a mental picture of it, and I have memories of doing that in elementary school where I would put my fingers in to a half square and make a clicking sound like a camera. 

I really love the mixture of Fine Art and documentary photography, whether it’s one or the other or a little bit of both mixed together. My favorite thing ever is American/ European history from 1900-2000, and I think from this comes my love for historical photography and then the contemporary styles that try to emulate them. I feel like the reason why I love these photographs so much is because they tell a story (like documentary), but they are also beautiful (Fine Art), which inspires and often uplifts me. The photograph that I chose was taken about a year ago, for the drawing class. I think the reason why I like it so much is because at least to me it sort of gives off the vibe that I might get from a 60s photograph (which are some of my favorites). I really love the 1960s London look because I think it tells a strong story of the first generation that was coming out of the war, which is very complex and interesting. That is why I love documentary photography so much because it makes me think and wonder about the people or things pictured, like where they were from, what their moms where like, what scared or excited them all these little questions that make up people’s life stories that might not be present in the photograph, at least not completely. And like I stated earlier I love Fine Arts photography because it is beautiful, inspiring and also makes me think but in a slightly different way. So that’s sort of my interest in photograph in a nutshell.