INTRODUCING OLIVER BRYCE YATES

I am originally from a Town called Newcastle which is two hours north of Sydney and I now live in Sydney. Its the bee’s knee’s as far as living situations go, burritos on tap. I’m 23 going on 10 or 40 depending on what side of the bed I wake up. I got a camera when I was maybe 10? It was that really old film format  that i’m guessing is smaller than 35mm? Its what I imagine spies used to use. I shot some horrible photos of power lines if my memory serves me correct. My mother dearest is a photographer and I guess it was a case of monkey see monkey do. The more you can appreciate your photos the more you start to pick them apart so I don’t think I will ever achieve anything really. I’m still an asshole. What do you mean fetisch camera? Like fetish? This picture was taken with my now girlfriend Noni, when we were going on what could loosely be called a ‘date”? Which consisted of jumping a security fence and scaling an abondoned building to explore and get some photos. In hindsight it was a pretty retarded idea, to get to where this photo was taken we walked over a thinkmetal roof with a 8 story drop below it. She told me recently that a few people got busted by the police for doing more or less the same thing so I guess we got lucky. These are some of my room mate Sam’s photos. He shoot some nice photos and is a honey to boot.

4:57 pm  •  25 January 2010  •  13 notes

INTRODUCING BEN SEELEY

I come from Edinburgh and as much as I love it, I tend to get into a lazy routine there. It is an amazing place though; having something like Arthur’s Seat in the middle of your city is pretty special. I am 21 years old and I first got into taking photographs by messing around and using some disposable cameras on trips with my friends. I had never thought much further about taking photographs until I was applying for a Foundation course in London a couple of years ago. A friend had told me that the college liked to see photographs in portfolios and that was a very exciting thing to hear. I started looking at some photo books then and gradually realised I should try to think about what I photographed and why. I’m fairly unsure of what I would like to achieve with photography other than to enjoy it and try to make work that is believeable for me. Having said that, I would like to complete my degree in Photography - a large part of my life which would be nonexistent if i had not started taking pictures. This is a recent picture of my friend Mark. We have spent the majority of our formative years together cavorting and riding skateboards - he has now taken to slicking his hair back and practicing tatoos on his own thighs. He is a confusing and fascinating person. I really like my friend Luka Young work. Her photographs are so genuine, she has mad skills and the best attitude.

1:13 pm  •  20 January 2010  •  6 notes

INTRODUCING LINA BIELINYTE

I am from a small Baltic country, Lithuania and it‘s raining here a lot… I‘m 20. My first pictures were taken with digital camera, about 4 years ago. I think they have a sparkle of creativity, but it was not what I wanted. The world through that camera didn’t match with my universe as I see it. I had to go analogue. Then I found out my grandpa’s old soviet camera Zorki. Oh, something different started from that moment… From the beggining I was exploring the world around me, experimenting with lights and shadows. I was interested in forms, shapes, colours. My beloved models were my cat and trees. I‘m a bit anti-social so I just don‘t like photographing people. I‘d rather go into the woods where everything is standing there quietly. I‘m searching for harmony, peace and quiet which I don‘t find in everyday life. I think i‘m creating a little magic world. And everybody‘s welcome there. My life hasn’t changed very much. I‘m just happy that I found a way to express myself. It‘s important, especially when I think that I‘m not capable of doing anything else but taking pictures. I’d be dead without it. A living dead. A zomby.My grandpa‘s Zorki-4 is my favorite camera and I‘m glad I didn’t buy it from a stranger. This is a really strange picture. It should have been a simple shot in the woods, as always. But when I scanned it and saw that face in a right upper corner, I freaked out! God, that face doesn’t have any good intentions. And It doesn’t seem to be from this world at all. Undoubtedly, Alison Scarpulla is my favorite photographer. What i love about her work? Oh, everything! Every single detail. She’s like a wizard using her camera instead of the magic wand.

12:20 pm  •  15 January 2010  •  5 notes

INTRODUCING RIANNA COX

I grew up in a little village called Berkswell in the middle of England. There were only around twenty five houses and no other children to be friends with so my three
brothers and I would make our own fun in the fields and our garden. We had a rope swing and an orchard and an ancient sundial. I can’t think of a better place for a child’s imagination to develop than in the English countryside. I am twenty going on twelve. My first memory of taking photographs is when i was seven or eight, I liked setting up my dolls and bears and taking pictures of them as if they were eating or at a party. Then I got into photography when I was fourteen or fifteen. I really liked looking at people’s pictures online and seeing how they documented their lives and so I started doing the same, I suppose it started from there. I started a diploma in photography when I was seventeen and I am now in the middle of a degree in Photojournalism. I still enjoy looking at how people document their lives in pictures. I like really small details that make up the bigger picture of someones life. I like seeing their friends, the environment in which they live and even things like what they eat or wear and I wanted to start recording my life in the same way. Nowadays my photographs aren’t so much of a chronological diary of my life, I see something I like or something surreal and take the picture. When I began my Photojournalism course I was in the frame of mind that I wanted my pictures to be world changing and intense, but I have changed and now I think the biggest goal I could hope to achieve with my pictures is for someone to think “Oh, that looks nice” or “that is a really strange thing to see, isn’t the world strange?”. I have a really deep interest in mythology and folklore and I think that is reflected in my photographs a little, albeit unintentionally. I have never thought about how my life has changed through photography before, but I have just realised that it has changed everything. My identity has changed along with the content of my photographs, many of the friends I have now are as a result of photography, even my first love was based around a mutual interest in photography. Without it I wouldn’t be living in London and I don’t think I would be as near to being happy with myself as a person. I hope that photography will allow me to see the world and make more friendships and look back on my life when I am an old lady and think “yes, I had a nice life, didn’t I?” I don’t have a specific camera that I fell in love with and use all the time, I’m not really like that. I am very poor so I buy cheap film cameras from charity shops, use them until they break and then repeat the cycle. However, I have been in a long term relationship with an old Minolta X-70 for a few years now and I do care about it. This photograph was taken at an art squat I went to with my mum and was probably one of the most surreal nights of my life. The squat was a huge mansion in central London, all lit by candelight. There were balloons hung from all the chandeliers and an old man with a plaited beard wearing a sheep mask on the back of his head walking around playing a flute. There were human marionettes and blindfolded people painting all over the walls, and a room with a maze made out of cardboard that you had to crawl through with fairy lights everywhere. I have never seen so many photo oppurtunities in my life! I love the work of my best friend Sophie Curtis, I’m almost certain someone on this blog must have namechecked her before but I love her so na na na na na i don’t caaare! She is magic and lovely and sweet and unique and really committed to not only documenting her life but also the lives of her friends.

12:03 pm  •  11 January 2010  •  2 notes

INTRODUCING T REILLY HODGSON

I grew up 30 minutes North of Toronto on the edge of a suburban town. I had the perfect balance between a suburban paradise and being able to hop on my bike to the forest and train tracks to do bad kid stuff. After having lived in East Vancouver for a few years, moving back here has been a very odd experiment. I turned 22 a few months ago and I feel more than ever that I haven’t done enough yet. I wish that I could have had the experiences that my friends have had over the past few years, but I guess I can only do things one at a time. I started carrying a 35mm point and shoot when I was 11 or 12 to take pictures of graffiti. I’ve been taking pictures off and on since then. When I was a kid I remember pouring over boxes and boxes of my parents’ old prints. Most of the photos aren’t anything special but I think it made me aware really early of how your memory can be built and changed. I do not have a real goal with my photos right now other than to document what I am doing. I think a lot about what these pictures are going to say to me in 30 years, or what they’ll say to my kids, if I have any. It’s hard to be satisfied. My life hasn’t really changed too drastically because I take pictures. It has been a positive thing though. I have met a lot of people and gotten myself into situations I’d have missed out on without a camera. I don’t have a specific camera that I love, like some people do. I am not always the friendliest to my cameras, so I mostly make pictures on film using a few small cheap rangefinders. Digital isn’t real. This is a photo of my friend Derek taken in 2007 at my apartment in East Vancouver. I bought the film from a thrift store. It was still sealed in the box, but when I got the pictures back I got this ghost image. Last time I saw Derek was over the summer when he was coming through Toronto on the way to Halifax. A witch cursed us when we were eating pizza and I haven’t heard from Derek since that day. When I found this photo in a box last month it captured exactly the spell I feel we’re under. Nobody believes me about the witch, but it happened. Lately I have a hard time looking at photos or really committing to liking photographers. Everything seems to look exactly the same through a computer screen lately. I like looking at photographs in real life on a wall. That said, the last thing I saw that I was really impressed with were some old Edward Steichen prints.

3:02 pm  •  2 January 2010  •  2 notes

INTRODUCING AARON MACDONALD

I’ve grown up in a small town between Toronto and wilderness. It’s pretty suburban, pretty protestant. Pretty boring. It’s hard to find inspiration here sometimes. Sometimes it’s nice to be between the city and the woods though. But I won’t stay here too much longer. I’m 18 and I don’t want to get any older. Except for turning 19. A little less than a year ago I have started to take pictures that I can look at now and say I like. It all started last year with my mom’s Canon Supershot 35mm point-and-shoot that nobody ever used anymore. Before that I’d been taking pictures of my cats and all with my family’s digital camera. Something new started after running a roll of film through that camera. I found a 35mm SLR at a camera store in town (and was totally ripped off!) and started using it, not really knowing anything about photography. My own photos often make me realize the wealth of things in my life. I guess that’s not a goal, but it usually just happens that way. To be able to realize that and share it with anybody through photography is incredible. My memory’s never been so good. When I have my camera around I feel motivated to do things. To make some excitement. Olymp us OM-1 is my fetish camera. This is a photo from my last summer’s family vacations. My parents thought it was great to go to this dumpy resort north of here for a weekend. It was not a place I wanted to be, so my brother and I climbed up the trees. What Lauren Dukoff continues to do (especially her less commercial work) is always inspiring. As jealous as I’ve become because of the subject of most of her work, I’ve always admired her to no end. Her book Family is astounding, and I just wish I could hang out with her.

11:54 am  •  26 December 2009  •  4 notes

INTRODUCING HANNAH DAVIS

I was born 30mins south of London and now I live in South London. I like the city on most days, especially in the summer. But at the moment I have a longing to be back at home in my woods on crisp winter days. I’m 20, not far off 21, when I will be able to rent cars and go for road trips abroad! It all started with messing around on crappy snappy digital cameras and then when I was around 16 my father gave me his old olympus SLR and it all went from there. Having that camera was so special because it made me feel like I could actually do something different and make something beautiful - I was already considering studying art at that time but felt really confused about what I was making. I’m definitely a collector of things and stuff, and in the same way I collect photographs, rather like an anthropologist collects data from far off lands. I’m not sure what I want to do with it, but every now and then sets of photographs sort of form together which becomes quite interesting and I seem to learn something from them. I have never felt so passionate about something ever in my entire life! I think I notice a lot more of the everyday around me - special little things that I would
never have picked up on. I have also met a few people from flickr now and it’s weird to think that that relationship wouldn’t exist without photography and the internet. I have to take a camera wherever I go all the time so for that reason most of my photos come from my yasica t5 because it fits in every bag. I do like my zenit ttl though because the lens is gorgeous. I went home recently when I just needed to escape from the city and I visited my woods and took this picture as the sun had just gone down. It’s actually part of a project I’m thinking about which talks about the camera creating this liminal space between human experience and something transcendental. I think the flash on the camera is really interesting, particuarly in this circumstance because for a split second it reveals this other world living and breathing and moving without human presence. I love Rianna’s work. Shes possibly the cutest thing I’ve ever met - her and Sophie Curtis do everything together and I am so happy to have met them several times now. I think we all share a similar sense of awe and fascination at the spiritual and mystical world.

6:04 am  •  24 December 2009  •  4 notes

INTRODUCING ALLEN DELANEY

Currently I’m an MFA student in Portland, Oregon. I’m originally from Fort Worth, Texas and reside in Dallas, Texas when I’m away from school.  I’ve also called Providence, Rhode Island and Austin, Texas home as well. I am 31 years old. I’d like to say I started taking pictures around 18. I remember getting an SLR for a birthday or graduation or something but I didn’t know what to do with it. I’ve probably only seriously been shooting for maybe 7 years? I started taking pictures after studying film for a few years.  I was upset with the collaboration that was involved with film making and wanted more control.  I switched over to photography and started shooting these crazy weird self-portraits.  I wouldn’t let anyone even be in a photo of mine for probably 2 years. I never set out having any certain goals to achieve. I just make sure to carry a camera for those moments I don’t expect/might not ever see again. My life’s definitely changed since I started in photography. Just in the last 4 months I’ve started seeing all of these lines and patterns in nature living here in the Pacific Northwest.  I just become more observant with a camera in my hand. I probably wouldn’t explore as much without photography.  I’ve always enjoyed traveling but now I spend as much time interested in what’s between point A and point B. I don’t really have a fetish camera. I like to stick to easy point-and-shoot’s. For some reason I like to limit myself with technology. This photo was from a series I was experimenting with at the Caldera Residency in Bend, Oregon.  I had set out on this super cold, rainy day with this idea of creating pictorialist or maybe something resembling a painting. I just remember freezing and my nose running and trying to not set the forest on fire with these military-sized smoke bombs I was shooting off. Lately I can’t stop looking at Peter Sutherland’s work.  I just picked up his book Buck Shots and can’t get over the dedication put into the series. I’m also intrigued with his mixture of nature, landscapes and youth culture. I’m currently trying to figure how they all work together (they definitely do).

5:16 am  •  22 December 2009  •  4 notes

INTRODUCING XU BENNY

I come from China but currently reside in Vancouver, Canada. Vancouver is a nice city to live, if you like the endless rain in the winter. I’m 22 yo. In 2008 I found some awesome photographers’ works, and it fundamentally changed the way I take pictures. Why I take pictures? Just because I get a lot of pleasure from it and to become a billionaire… I pretty much carry the camera with me all the time now, and I see the world differently through the camera. Without photography I wouldn’t have met my best friend Aaron. I’m film fetish, although it is not so economic to use anymore. Currently I shoot with a Contax G1(45mm Lens), an Olympus mjuII, a Yahsica T4 and a Yashica Mat-124G (medium format).
This is a photo of some guys playing rats on the street, pretty funny bunch, but I’m not sure whether they were high or drunk or both, anyway, that night I smoked pot for the first time. I like old photographers like William Eggleston, Garry Winogrand, Robert Frank… but these days I am really into Todd Fisher’s works, they all have the ability to catch the most perfect moments.

6:21 am  •  20 December 2009  •  4 notes

INTRODUCING PETER NIKOLTSOS

I come from Thessaloniki, Greece. I was raised there so I’m used to the place and it feels like home. I was born in 1979 and will be 31 this February. I took my first pictures when I was arround 13. It felt like a very cool thing to do at the time and that’s how I started. Left all the other reasons aside, I like to tell the story about a television commercial that made a big impression on me. It showed picture taking look very sexy and badass. I was a teenager then, so I guess something like that was very appealing to me. I don’t think I’m trying to achieve anything other than to document things as best as I can. I try to get as much of my work published and so I guess putting my images out into the world is the final goal and that becomes an end in itself. If I don’t get that done it feels like the job is left incomplete. For years it was a fascinating past time, a practice that brought me mostly joy. After things got professional and more serious the shooting part remained fascinating but everything else is mostly stress and disapointment. I wish for less stress and disapointment in the future and more money and fame instead. Of course more money and fame will probably bring more stress and disapointment, ha ha! I’m happy to own a rangefinder Leica which is probably the ultimate fetish camera. But it’s my camera now so it doesn’t feel like a fetish anymore. I never owned a Nikon FM2 SLR and that is definitely a fetish camera. This is a photo of a girl in the studio. There’s no great story here, but what was unique about this shoot was that this girl was very comfortable which is quite rare beacause people get intimidated in front of a camera. Particularly in a studio setting where you have big lights flashing and a large camera. My favourites are the classic masters such as Walker Evans and August Sander and early photographers like Gustave Le Gray, Timothy O’ Sullivan and William Henry Fox Talbot.

6:48 pm  •  13 December 2009