Alexander Binder

August 23rd, 2009 by Veronica

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Alexander Binder was born on Halloween night, 1976 in Black Forest, Germany. He is a self-taught photographer and has a degree in economics. Both his photo and his film projects are characterized by a fascination for the mystic, the spiritual and the occult.

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His production process combines digital recording technology with self-built lenses. His works have been exhibited in the United States, France and England and have been published in numerous magazines and blogs around the world.

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FJORD: How do you feel the Internet has affected the way you work? Have you changed the style of work you do or the way you present your work based on the way the Internet has changed how photography functions?

Alexander: On one hand, the Internet helped me gain more attention for my work. Some decades ago it would have been much harder to show my photos to a worldwide audience. On the other hand, the Internet is the best medium to build up and maintain contacts with other artists, curators, photographers & nerds like me around the globe. But I wouldn’t go so far to say that the internet changed my style of work, i guess. I found my influences much earlier - in a time when 35mm film, slide projectors, 8-bit technology and the Commodore C64 ruled.

F: How do you gain inspiration for your work? Where do you look for ideas?

A: First off, I’d like to mention that I spent my whole childhood in the local video rental store. This 24/7 consumption of all kinds of horror-videos, psycho thrillers and science-fiction movies provided the basis for my “inner visual library”. Much of my work is heavily influenced by these film genres and even today, I love to spend a weekend in front of my TV set, watching horror movies…especially the late 70’s and early 80s stuff like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, Hellraiser or Evil Dead. On VHS cassette, of course…

& yes, I am fascinated by occult sciences and paranormal phenomena.

F: What are your favorite websites?

A: There are so many great websites out there that it’s really difficult to mention my favorites. I think Tim Barber’s Tiny Vices is one of the most comprehensive and influential resources for contemporary photography and emerging artists.

Beyond that, there are many great artist blogs like boogiephoto.blogspot.comfuneralfrench.blogspot.com or leonardgrecoblog.blogspot.com just to mention a few.

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F: Do you have any suggestions to help new and emerging photographers gain exposure? How did you initially start to promote yourself and your work?

A: Beside popular commonplaces like “contacts” or “submissions” there is only one suggestion from my point of view:  Don’t get irritated by the sheer amount of good work on the Internet. Just find your own way, your own style and your own focus. Serve a cause greater than self-interest and avoid just trying to be important.

if there’s no substance there won’t be anything at all.

F: Where do you see your work going in the next year and in the future in general?

A: I created my best works in the Black Forest and Scandinavia. It’s this special atmosphere in the dark woods which I really appreciate. Therefore I hope to spend a lot of time in these places in 2010. I don’t have any masterplan for the future and I would be thankful if i could just continue with the things I am doing now.

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http://alexanderbinder.de
http://alexanderbinder.blogspot.com

Peggy Ann McDonnell

August 11th, 2009 by Veronica

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Peggy Ann graduated from Parsons this spring with a BFA in Photography and was awarded Honorable Mention in her thesis show. Her clients include Urban Outfitters, Nylon Magazine, Nylon Guys Magazine, Metal Magazine, Inven.tory, and The Ivy.

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The use of natural light is the most important aspect of my work. I mainly shoot with a Mamiya RZ67 with Kodak 160 NC at (pretty much always) f/2.8, this helps me create consistency in my work but recently I have taken a liking to shooting with disposable cameras, which is pretty much the opposite of that. I go from complete control to very little. This is sort of a reflection of how I work as well, I try to go into shoots with little pre-conceived ideas of what the images should turn out like and I let the situation play itself out. The people in my pictures are important as well – I love shooting real, interesting people.

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FJORD: How do you feel the Internet has affected the way you work? Have you changed the style of work you do or the way you present your work based on the way the Internet has changed how photography functions?

Peggy: The Internet is the primary but not preferred presentation of my work. I still make c-prints so I find it difficult to match the color and quality on the Internet but this is not something that has changed my style or process. The Internet has broadened my audience though and I think that is incredibly important.

F: How do you gain inspiration for your work? Where do you look for ideas?

P: I have been working with a single subject (Jasper – a Muse, if you will) for a long period of time so when I am looking for inspiration I look to my subject, whether it is Jasper or another person. I would consider my work portraiture, so personality is a crucial part of each picture or series of pictures. Other forms of inspiration come at random from: daylight, movement, places, textures of surfaces, etc. I most recently have been looking at the work of Tom Sandberg but I tend not to think about other people’s photographs when I am making my own work.

F: What are your favorite websites?

P: A couple of blogs I follow: coacd.blogspot.com, sisterwife.tumblr.com, blackberryvision.tumblr.com, purple-diary.com, kelleyhoffman.com

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F: Do you have any suggestions to help new and emerging photographers gain exposure? How did you initially start to promote yourself and your work?

PUse the contacts you already have to your advantage and use the Internet! Keeping strong connections with the people you meet in the industry is one of the most important ways to get started. And the Internet is possibly the best way to get your work and your name in front of people. I created a blog (peggyann.tumblr.com) to do just that, and it works.

F: Where do you see your work going in the next year and in the future in general?

P: I will continue to shoot Jasper to create a larger body of work for that series. I have a few other projects I am going to be working on as well (like a continuation of the black and grey image above) but right now I am mostly going to focus jobs rather than fine art.

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http://www.peggymcdonnell.com/
http://peggyann.tumblr.com

Ana Cuba

July 22nd, 2009 by Veronica

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Ana Cuba was born in 1989 and grew up in Zaragoza. She’s currently living in Barcelona, where she is studying Audiovisual Communication at the Pompeu Fabra university. Ana Cuba has been photographing since 2007.

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After two years of experimenting with photography, I finally found my path with portraiture. Over the last few months, I’ve been working with the themes of adolescence and  vulnerability. My photographs explore a false intimacy and sometimes the inevitably forced, in a naturalistic way. Currently, what interests me most is the human body itself, and I am exploring concepts like the fragmentation and corruption of it.

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FJORD: How do you feel the Internet has affected the way you work? Have you changed the style of work you do or the way you present your work based on the way the Internet has changed how photography functions?

Ana: Well, in part, I started with photography due to the Internet, so we can not talk about a real “change” in my case. Obviously, I would have started photographing without the Internet too, but in my case, I think it was some kind of catalyst for  my starting.

F: How do you gain inspiration for your work? Where do you look for ideas?

A: Apart from spending too much time on Flickr and other websites, I gain inspiration mostly from cinema (that’s what I’m studying), some interesting classes at my university, and of course, my everyday life. I know it sounds cliche but I try to always keep a camera with me so I can capture everything that catches my attention. Although they don’t always have photographic value, it’s very interesting to collect these shots.

F: What are your favorite websites?

A: Some of them are Flickr, Youtube, IMDb, ffffound, wordreference and lots of interesting blogs like Booooooom. Recently, I’ve discovered  http://dearphotographer.com/, which is really funny and sincere.

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F: Do you have any suggestions to help new and emerging photographers gain exposure? How did you initially start to promote yourself and your work?

A: Well, I still consider myself in that situation, so I don’t know if I can really help. What I’ve done up to now is starting a Flickr, which is really good for starting. Through there, I’ve met lots of people whose work has inspired me. If you believe in your work, you just have to wait, although we all know that’s difficult, patience is really important.

F: Where do you see your work going in the next year and in the future in general?

A: I don’t even know if I will like my current work one year from now. I’m quite insatiable in that aspect.  So I prefer not to do predictions.

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http://www.anacuba.com
www.flickr.com/bububob

Jaime Campbell

June 22nd, 2009 by Veronica

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Jamie Campbell is a canadian photographer who splits his time between Montreal (where he is completing his MFA from Concordia University) and Toronto (where he likes to do most of his actual production). His work has been published internationally, and exhibited in both Canada and the U.S.  Jamie Campbell works with the themes of insecurity, burden, vulnerability and desperation, but does it with self-deprecation and humour and profound honesty, leaving you unsure of whether you want to hit him or hug him.

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My photographic direction, or exploration, is centralized in the area of constructed dilemmas and fabricated scenarios emphasizing both the internal and external struggle of the human condition. Focusing within the realm of ambiguity arising from specific gesture, gaze, and interaction with location, my work creates fictional narratives that display introverted moments of vulnerability and the exhaustion wrought by defeat.

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FJORD: How do you feel the Internet has affected the way you work? Have you changed the style of work you do or the way you present your work based on the way the Internet has changed how photography functions?

Jaime: The internet has amplified an all around small-world-effect. And I am not too consciously aware of how it has affected my aesthetic style per say, but it has definitely had a drastic effect on my quality control and standards. Once something is posted on the internet it exists, and is accessible, on a world-wide level. It speaks on your behalf as an image-maker, so it best represent you with the utmost truth. It is almost as if the critique phase of the work-in-progress aspect of photography is vanishing, and only polished and completed work is floating around, because no one wants to be attached to something they are unsure about. I guess the internet has made me more critical about what I choose to present.

F: How do you gain inspiration for your work? Where do you look for ideas?

J: Right now I am going through volumes 1 – 4 of Yves Naud’s U.F.O’s and Extra-Terrestrials In History (1978), and I am trying to extract real life scenarios that I can loosely base my new photographic work on. But mainly, I just project my own fictitious melodrama and banal life situations into the framework of my images. I suppose my inspiration is based on a constant fear of being uninspired. 

F: What are your favorite websites?

J: I just downloaded the new safari and it tracks your most viewed sites, or something like that. So some of my ‘top viewed sites’ as recorded today are:

http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/ - the famous Conscientious

http://ca.yahoo.com/ - email

http://christopherboyne.blogspot.com/ - a good friends blog

http://www.youtube.com/ - you never know?

http://laurapannack.com/ - super pretty work

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F: Do you have any suggestions to help new and emerging photographers gain exposure? How did you initially start to promote yourself and your work?

J: Very simply, embrace rejection and maintain presence.

I am still very much in the emerging stage, and there are so many resources and calls for submissions by various photography related outlets that anyone can apply to (via webzines, galleries, magazines, contests, etc). Opportunities, for the most part, don’t miraculously appear – it is really a matter of constant research, dedication, and the actual applying to such outlets -  which will then expose your work to the audiences that you didn’t necessarily have access to. Sometimes it pays off in a gratifying way, but for the most part it is a constant struggle (prepare yourself for that!).

F: Where do you see your work going in the next year and in the future in general?

J: In a year I’ll be just starting to work on my final thesis project for the completion my MFA. It seems a bit too stressful to attempt to rationalize it, or conceive it in this paragraph of an answer. However, the only real assurance I have is the thought that it will be much better than any of my prior work.

www.jamiecampbellphotography.com

special thanks to anthony pereira for the bio contribution.

T.J Proechel

June 22nd, 2009 by Veronica

T.J. Proechel (1984) was born in St. Paul, MN and graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2008. Proechel’s several bodies of work, including Sparrows PointDreamhouse and Baltimore each attempt to approach landscape photography in different ways. Proechel’s work has been shown nationally and featured in Locus Magazine.  Proechel recently completed a commissioned project for the Contemporary Museum of Baltimore, photographing local shop owners and their businesses. 

Over the last five months I’ve been working as a housing contractor in Minnesota. During that time I’ve been fixing up and maintaining foreclosed homes. The project Dream House is photographs of foreclosed homes in the Twin Cities. While doing this work, I’ve found myself in the midst of peoples cast off lives, personal items left behind. Often these items flesh out the people who occupied the homes before and their struggles. This project is about the current foreclosure American crisis, but is also about the fantasy of the ideal American life, the unrealistic sacrifices people make and the hardship which we endure to achieve it.  

FJORD: How do you feel the Internet has affected the way you work? Have you changed the style of work you do or the way you present your work based on the way the Internet has changed how photography functions?

T.J: In a way that’s an impossible question. I feel like my work has matured with the booming of photography’s web based presence and it’s incredibly hard for me to parse what particular influence it has had on the direction of my work. For the most part I’ve used the internet in incredibly uninteresting ways, simply to show and distribute work. Although I am going to re-launch my Proechel for Presidential website in the next few months, for my 2010 run for The President of Minnesota. 

F: How do you gain inspiration for your work? Where do you look for ideas?

T.J: I watch too many movies, read too many books, work too hard and try my best to do things that make me uncomfortable. I also have tendencies toward obsession. Right now, I can’t help but impulsively watch old presidential debates and speeches. Over the last year I’ve watched the West Wing series three times through, which most people find this disgusting - but I can’t help myself. I’ve also read several Presidential biographies over the last year on John Adams, FDR and Ronald Reagan. I think this year everyone has been concentrating a little more than normal on presidential politics, but at this point I’m starting to get a little worried about myself. 

F: What are your favorite websites?

T.J: AhornRhizomePoliticoPhotodreamboatsWe Can’t Paint Network

F: Do you have any suggestions to help new and emerging photographers gain exposure? How did you initially start to promote yourself and your work?

T.J: First and foremost - like everyone and their mother says - make a lot of work. Make too much work - more work than you know what to do with. Follow that up by throwing away what sucks and keeping what’s mediocre and good. The only thing you can do is send it to people constantly and furiously. It doesn’t take much to send an e-mail and people who run blogs and photo feature websites like Fjord. If they don’t like the work you send them, make more work and send it out again. Keep doing that ’till it sticks. Eventually somebody will like something. But I don’t know any better than anybody else, but I’m just figuring it out as I go along. 

F: Where do you see your work going in the next year and in the future in general?

T.J: As I said earlier I’m running for President of Minnesota in 2010, which will take up a lot of my time. I also have a couple of photo-based projects coming down the pike. 

 

http://tjproechel.com/

Ryan Pfluger

June 20th, 2009 by Veronica

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Edited is a work in progress in which I am photographing contemporary decision-makers in photography from photo editors to gallery owners. The work deals with the mystique that surrounds these people as well as the act of switching roles with them. 

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Ryan Pfluger recently completed his MFA at the School of Visual Arts and is a New York native. Ryan feels that there is a strong, vulnerable connection between the individual, their sense of self, their surroundings, and their bodies. Ryan currently lives in Brooklyn and is working on a new body of work photographing photo editors, curators and agents in NYC.  While not working on his personal work, he shoots for magazines like New York Times Magazine, The London Guardian and Details.

 

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FJORD: How do you feel the Internet has affected the way you work? Have you changed the style of work you do or the way you present your work based on the way the Internet has changed how photography functions?

RYAN: I’m extremely conscious of how much the internet has affected the way people look at art.  I’m not sure it has affected my photographic process, but it definitely has changed how accessible my work can be to editors and dealers and casual viewers. I constantly am scanning new work and putting it on my site or blog, which is how most people can see new images immediately.  It allows people not apt to go to a gallery access to images they may not otherwise see.  However, I do not necessarily like how digital photography has changed the role of photography.  I think it has made artists careless and not conscious of their decisions or editing process.

F: How do you gain inspiration for your work? Where do you look for ideas?

R: I’m very drawn to straight portraiture and photographers of the 70’s like Peter Hujar and Arthur Tress.  I gain a lot of inspiration from movies and television as well.  I’m really interested in something called para-social interaction or para-social relationships.  This is what influences my work the most.  The idea of one-sided relationships in which one person knows a great deal about someone, but the other knows nothing.  I try and create images in which people feel they really know the people in my photographs.  I myself make photographs for the purpose of interacting with strangers due to my own social phobias.  So in the end, I guess it’s people that really give me inspiration.

F: What are some of your favorite websites?

R:  I’m a huge photo-blog reader.  Pretty much any photographer I enjoy to some capacity I’ll read their blogs.  I loved Rachel Hulin’s blog on photo-shelter which is no longer, but that was always a really good read.  I think Amy Stein does a great job with interesting information and great visuals.  I also will browse flickr and ffffound because sometimes there are some real gems to be found or at least something funny.

 

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F: Do you have any suggestions to help out new and emerging photographers gain exposure? How did you first start to promote yourself and your work?

R: Persistence, Persistence, Persistence.  This business is all a waiting game except for a select lucky few.  You really need to constantly make your presence known.  Make a well edited book and precise email promotional material.  There are so many photographers now, that it will only become more and more difficult.  I started sending my book out immediately during the beginning of grad school.  Even if my work wasn’t exactly where I wanted it to be, I was letting people know who I am.  Planting the seed.  I think that if you are good at what you do, and you have a strong skin, you can go very far with your work.  Just have to have some patience in most cases.

F: Where do you see your work going in the next year and the future in general?

R: I think I’ll continue with my ideas of the role of photography as I’m doing with this project.  This one, which is evaluating the people who are making decisions in contemporary photography is very exciting for me.  The fact that photo editors and curators who are usually in the background, are allowing themselves to now be my subject is very interesting.  In the future I will continue doing projects that have the undertones of what photography is and how it is used.  I just hope that my work continues to make people think, that’s really what is most important to me.  Nowadays everyone wants instant gratification.  I really just want people to continue spending time with the work and reflecting on their own lives and relationships.

 

 

 

http://ryanpfluger.com/
http://ryanpfluger.blogspot.com/

Wayne Liu

June 16th, 2009 by Veronica

My photographs explore the relationship between urban environments and the individuals that inhabit these spaces. This body of work comes from my one-month visit to China in Oct. 2007, where mass rural-to-urban migration has snowballed into dramatic changes for its cities. What was once a state controlled political system now caters to the liberal flow of capital exchange. I have tried to document these transitions by exploring the psychological effects as I understand them by pointing my lens on the streets of Beijing and Shanghai.

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Staying in China for me was mixed with familiarity and surprise. These images are incomplete. I am a silent voyeur on the surface of a mass historic change, a phenomenon that perhaps only an audience can bring awareness to. I use out-dated photo paper and print in high contrast to create a feel that parallels the historic remnants and ongoing transformation of a society awakening to a mixture of dreams and nightmares. In these ambiguous fields shall my studies further dwell.

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Wayne Liu spent the first five years of his life in Taiwan and is now based in New York City.

FJORD: How do you feel the Internet has affected the way you work? Have you changed the style of work you do or the way you present your work based on the way the Internet has changed how photography functions?

WAYNE: I started photography just a few years before the digital boom, and in NYC, I have access to work in the b/w darkroom. So I’ve been slow to integrate photos digitally. After an edit, I use a digital camera to reproduce from the selected prints. I’d then make quick and cheap digital prints to sequence into a book dummy or two. Often I print many variations (in the darkroom) from one negative (lighter, darker, solarized…) and digitize them all, and then sequence them intuitively. Example from a slideshow made for a band: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5exH6zt4I_4 After this slideshow attempt, I will make more book dummies, but I also plan incorporate digital slideshows, in as many variable sequences as I may find suitable. Its not so much an influence of the internet upon me, but I’ve noticed that in comparison to the total mess (in my studio space) of negatives and photos, I am relatively more organized when working with the computer. One may interpret this as the control freak mindset of the virtual medium…not sure.

F: How do you gain inspiration for your work? Where do you look for ideas?

W: I was born in Taiwan in 1979, and grew up there and in the States. Shooting in China is a personnel confrontation to expose myself to my first familiar language, and yet find the ruptures of a foreign society and to try to intuit some sense from it. Otherwise, I enjoy browsing bookstores, reading and looking, and eating with friends in Chinatown where the food is cheap and smells close to the first solid digestions of my youth.

F: What are some of your favorite websites?

W: random list: Wikipedia, New York Public Library (for music reservation, etc.), MOMA and Film Anthology film schedules, Bookforum, Aldaily, Lightstalkers…

F: Do you have any suggestions to help out new and emerging photographers gain exposure? How did you first start to promote yourself and your work?

W: Finding a work flow that suits one’s desire. I enjoy the mess of the darkroom and prints laying all over my styrofoam bed; its just me. But to enjoy living with one’s work, as it were a pet or partner or a Dutch wife, seems to me crucial. And then being able to crash at a friend’s couch, forget about the crap that one’s made, to keep an emotional distance…and to go back as a house cleaner and reorganize and edit and send it out to space. And then work on some other work…something like this, at least for me.

F: Where do you see your work going in the next year and the future in general?

W: Inspired partly by a friend who collects tossed objects from the street, I have found a dead sparrow and pigeon and requested for salmon heads to document, in line with shooting faces (as death and/or life masks) of friends in and around my life currently. For big fun, I will continue to shoot some fashion- http://www.coutorture.com/1077277 , http://www.coutorture.com/1552316, I will go back to China to shoot further, and also to Taiwan to confront the ghosts of my adolescent years. Also somewhere in Eastern Europe, which in relation to China, presents a different aspect of post-Communist History.

For now, I plan to shoot film, print in the darkroom, but distribute (when necessary) digital files.

tinyvices.com: Wayne Liu
eleanormag.com: Wayne Liu
guernicamag.com : Wayne Liu

Soorin Kim

June 14th, 2009 by Veronica

Soorin Kim is a photographer from Seoul, Korea. She was enrolled in the photography program at Parsons School for Design and has shot for Teen Vogue Korea, Ledebut Magazine and was an intern for photographer Ryan McGinley.

As I began to study photography, I always wondered why people have to and do change until the dying moment. Once, we were all innocent, young, and knew nothing about the world but were still happier than ever. Why can’t we always see the world around us with the innocent eye of a child?

When I started this project, I wanted to capture things from the perspective of an innocent mind. However, as I go through this project, many thoughts went through my mind. I thought about the mind of a six year old who is curious about everything around him or her and a premature innocent girl whose never experienced love. My project, ‘Save a Virgin,’ is the question that I ask to the world as I look to myself as a consciously changing, twenty-one year old young woman.

FJORD: How do you feel the Internet has affected the way you work? Have you changed the style of work you do or the way you present your work based on the way the Internet has changed how photography functions?

SOORIN: As all know, the Internet has developed drastically over the last decade. It has made the sharing of my work easier, and also taught me how to learn from others’ work.

F: How do you gain inspiration for your work? Where do you look for ideas?

S: I gain inspiration from my everyday life. Naturally, my work gets influenced by my life as well. For instance, my life in Korea, New York and New Jersey could never be the same because I get different feelings and different ideas depending on where I am, whom I meet, and what I see daily. In general, my recent interest is totally my cousins. They have always been the greatest model for my work since I was in middle school and we work great together. I try to expose their innocence, naturalness and free spirit. I dont think you should look out much for great ideas. Inspiration can come from anywhere, anytime.

F: Do you have any suggestions to help new and emerging photographers gain exposure? How did you initially start to promote yourself and your work?

S: I love the saying “God helps those who help themselves”. More than anything, you should know how to sell yourself and your work to get credit for it. Always be open to any criticism and suggestions, but keep your own standards and opinions as well. I showed my work to as many people as possible and listened to every single comment they had. I strive to become a very down-to-earth, friendly artist rather than a stubborn person who persists only in a singular way.

F: Where do you see your work going in the next year and in the future in general?

S: I cannot answer this question for sure. I consider myself still developing, learning and becoming better every single day as I try. However, one thing for sure is that my work will always speak about myself and be parallel to what my life looks like during that specific period of time. As a twenty-one year old college girl now, I wish for my work to look as fresh, crispy, colorful and fickle as I am!

http://soorinkim.com

Brandon Pavan

June 13th, 2009 by admin

Brandon Pavan was born in NJ where he currently resides. He started shooting in 2006 after a failed attempt at business school. He is currently enrolled in the photography program at Parsons School for Design.

Chasing is body of work based around emotional trips that occur throughout life. They are fleeting, intense and something that these photographs are attempting to embody as well as me trying to preserve. Images of love,paranoia as well as a journey into the dark and lighter side of the brain. “Chasing” is depicting emotion almost as piece of music where there are climax’s and cliffhangers,short and dense.

FJORD: How do you feel the Internet has affected the way you work? Have you changed the style of work you do or the way you present your work based on the way the Internet has changed how photography functions?

BRANDON: I would say the internet affected the way that I work by inspiring the what I make and see. Almost everything that I hear, read and see is from the internet. I would also say that unconciously the Intenet has affected the way I present my work, but I think everything I make is always an extension of myself.

F: How do you gain inspiration for your work? Where do you look for ideas?

B: I gain most of my inspiration from music and family/friends, pretty much anything that “speaks to me” on more than one level is where I draw my inspiration. Riding my bike inspires me, it gives me time to clear my head and think.

F: What are some of your favorite websites?

B: Mostly photo and design blogs. It’s great to see great, new photography; as well as a collective group of people who are motivated and passionate about their work. I also enjoy Velonews.com.

F: Do you have any suggestions to help out new and emerging photographers gain exposure? How did you first start to promote yourself and your work?

B: I find that my website is my greatest vehicle for getting my work out to people, as well as sending your work out wherever you can. It’s a great help to just send your work out to people and to be persistent.

F: Where do you see your work going in the next year and the future in general?

B: I see my work going in the same direction, yet progressing. As far as the upcoming year, some more work in China and at home. If all goes as planned, I would like to see it evolve into something that could get me work as an editorial photographer. I would love to just travel and shoot.

http://brandonpavan.com

Stéphane Obadia

June 13th, 2009 by admin

Stéphane Obadia was born in 1972 in Lyon, France. In addition to being a photographer, he works in the fields of graphic design and music. He is currently living in France, preparing upcoming exhibitions in which he plans to combine his art-making and music practices.

Taking pictures helps me pay attention to the world around me.


FJORD: How do you feel the Internet has affected the way you work? Have you changed the style of work you do or the way you present your work based on the way the Internet has changed how photography functions?

STÉPHANE: The internet hasn’t really changed the way I take photos or the kind of photographs I take, but at first, it has in fact motivated me to share and show my work. One thing I really appreciate with the internet, is the possibilty to discover unknown and amateur photographers. I am just as well interested in artistic photography, than in found photography, images collections, and everyday snapshots. I discovered an enormous amount of talented unknowns on the net. I like the way we influence each others without having to deal with reputation.

F: How do you gain inspiration for your work? Where do you look for ideas?

S: I collect images, I collect phrases and sometime, for example, these phrases become photographs. Photos I take also give me ideas. It work both ways. Ideas are everywhere to be found and it’s important for me to look in everyday life. Photography is like a reminder of that. Photography helps me pay attention.

F: What are some of your favorite websites?

S: I don’t spend much time surfing the net these days. I also write texts and I compose music and together with photography, it takes a lot of time!

F: Do you have any suggestion to help out new and emerging photographers gain exposure? How did you first start to promote yourself and your work?

S: A few years ago, like many others, I started showing my work on Flickr, then met a few photographers around the world. I think meeting photographers you like and who have similar concerns is a good way to start.

F: Where do you see your work going in the next year and the future in general?

S: Right now I am working on a serie of ‘double portraits’ with my medium format camera. A series showing people, matching or not, but always carefully chosen to create something slightly narrative in the image. I’ve been asked to create images for record covers too. And I’m also thinking of ways to combine my photographic work with my text and with my music.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/firlgriend/