My best pictures tell an unfinished story, with a sense of place or personality – evoking questions of who, what, where, when.
As Hiroji Kubota said, “I think everybody has a great drama to talk about. Everybody”.
My photography is about trying to find this story, to illustrate that drama. Or more correctly, it’s about conveying a portion of the story, a small moment in other people’s lives that makes us ask questions about who they are, what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, and how they ended up in the photo. The photographer’s craft includes both narration (the story) and curation (the moment in which the image is taken). My task is to balance those two things, with compositions and technique that help the viewer understand the scene.
Every photographer brings personal context to their work – experience, training, artistic, social and political beliefs. Some images are pre-visualised, and others are a product of the moment. Some images are for clients, who have pre-defined goals, and others are personal and exploratory. Yet in all, I believe that the photographer has a duty to respect the people being photographed – with a view to creating images which do justice to them as a person.
image courtesy © James Kezman