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I Recorded The Before Moments Of Portrait Photography Through My Medium Format Camera

The process of taking a photograph to some is simple. To others, it is a ritual, the camera and lens acting as an extension of their body, recording forever their memories.

The loading of the film, winding, clicking, cranking; the sounds and the feel of the camera in the hands. This methodology is a hugely personal one, and when photographing people, we are inviting them into that experience. A portrait can only hold so much information. It captures the split second of a moment, a moment held perpetually in suspension, isolating the instant the image is captured. But the short time before and after the shutter pressing are some of the most intimate, sometimes awkward, and often personal moments of the experience. It is in these moments that a person is at their most vulnerable; a camera, a device which is known to hide nothing, poised and ready to expose their true identities onto film. These are the moments which we seldom see.

Being able to witness the subject anticipating the shutter to press, the nervous shuffling of the feet, or the awkward laughter just before, these are the moments that I want to capture.

“To photograph people is to violate them. Possession of a camera does not license intrusion, as it does in this society whether people like it or not.” – Susan Sontag

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