Interviews

Interview with Valérie Six

WHO? I was born in the North of France but spent my teens in the Paris region and currently live in the Bordeaux surroundings.

Although our family tree shows an evident taste and aptitude for the arts across the generations, they were never encouraged or considered as a ‘real’ profession. Surprisingly, it was only recently that I learned that my great-grandfather, whose track we had lost, was both a talented photographer (transforming his pictures into paintings-like images) and the first flutist of the Paris Opera.

Interview with Dan Ziskie

WHO? I grew up in Detroit where I had an uncle who was a musician and who also ran a camera store. One day he gave me a Brownie camera which I still have, and he would come to our house and he and my father would film hours of family events, when small film cameras were becoming available to everyone. I suppose that was the first seed of my interest in photography.

Interview with Sachin Chauhan

WHO? I was born in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India, in the year 1997. When I was just six months old my family moved to Gurgaon, Haryana, where I’ve been living since. It has only been about four years since I’ve been into photography. Coming from a lower middle class family, photography as a career was unthinkable, let alone purchasing a camera. I think that’s the reason I really understood the value of photography, and emotionally connected with it. I purchased my first camera when I was in the first year of college, studying journalism and mass communication, it was a point and shoot.

Interview with Ken Walton

WHO? I hate this part. I’m a 5th-generation Californian, a resident of San Francisco, and the father of an 11 year-old daughter. I’m one of those people who is lousy at most things and fairly good at a few. I was really good at driving a taxi, which paid poorly, and really lousy at practicing law, which paid fairly well. I ended up starting software companies, which fell into the sweet spot. My last venture was a video game start-up that grew quickly and attracted the attention of a global conglomerate called Electronic Arts, which bought it. Alas, I was lousy at working for a global conglomerate, and soon found myself unemployed, depressed, and sitting on my couch.

Interview with Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet

WHO? I am a freelance photographer based in New York City. I was born and raised in Thailand. Three years ago, I left Thailand to study at the International Center of Photography in New York City. Studying at ICP opened my eyes to another level of understanding myself. Now I try my best to achieve my goal as a photographer.

Interview with Soumyendra Saha

WHO? I wish I knew. I was born and brought up in West Bengal, India to parents who studied and taught Philosophy, an arts subject, but strayed into Science and Technology to earn money. I found my calling when I picked up the camera in my free time, when I was out of a job.

Interview with Cedric Roux

WHO? I’m a almost 38 years old photographer, based in Paris, France. A cinema and stand up comedy enthusiast. I’m also a big fan of sports (basketball, football and many others).

Gulnara Samoilova in Conversation with Melissa O’Shaughnessy

Melissa O’Shaughnessy: Tell me a bit about your background. Where were you born and where did you grow up?
Gulnara Samoilova: I was born in Ufa, Bashkortostan and lived there until 1992. I fell in love with photography when I was 15 years old and knew immediately that it was what I wanted to do with my life. When I finished high school I went to work as a black and white printer. A year later I became a portrait photographer and shortly after got a job as a photography teacher in a Youth Arts Center. I was also working on my own personal projects.

Interview with Deb Achak

WHO? I am a Seattle-based fine art photographer. My work ranges from street photography captured in the water, to conceptual narratives. I love working in a variety of mediums at once. Street photography is exciting to me because it’s spontaneous, fluid, intuitive, and relies so much on the unconscious brain.

Interview with Vasco Trancoso

WHO? Born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1944. During my childhood I was influenced by the pictures of the great painters reproduced in an illustrated encyclopaedia. The fascination was instant and perhaps my first step towards constructing an aesthetic culture. Later, in the early years of high school, the art teacher encouraged us to organize exhibitions with paintings cut from calendars or magazines. These ‘exhibitions’ by great artists on different types of paintings was a second important step in the evolution of my “eye”. It was the beginning of the “road to seeing.”

Interviews

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