INSPIRATION
My Favorite Shot
HOME SWEET HOME
What’s the favorite photo you’ve taken?
Could you pick a favorite image you’ve taken? Not easy we know, but to coincide with our April 2023 HOME SWEET HOME call for entries, we asked some of the photographers in our community to do just that. Or at least to pick a shot related to the topic that they hold dearly, were happy to have taken recently, has a great story behind it, or that resonates with them in some other way right now. Here they tell us why…
(Banner image: Galit Seligmann)
LORENZO LINTHOUT
www.linthout.it / @lorenzolinthout
“I enter deserted houses,
until yesterday someone’s home refuge.
All is silence, only white shadows
they wander in foreign mirrors.
– Anna Achmatova
This photograph is part of a long series of shots taken in abandoned buildings. Through the mirror, I was able to capture the space through two parallel walls of the room. For me, space is a doubt: the doubt of places that no longer exist. You need to capture them with an image, because photographing them means trying meticulously to hold onto something. The sphere of this attempt, operated through the inventory of the different types of spaces, is used as a phenomenon of an essentially physical nature. Photographing means occupying a portion of space and the confirmation of the intrinsic essence of this relationship is offered in a game of identity between the linguistic sign and its spatial location.
The effort to retain and represent the state of the places, better definable as forgotten architecture, as the sign of time passing on the body of the buildings, corresponds exactly to the possibility of cataloging, to the meaning of things that flee, the changes that are lost, fading into the memory that only by illusion contains everything exactly, the space, that it is not possible to think. All this is the space of appropriation of experience which corresponds to the action of photographing.”
FABRICE WITTNER
www.wittner-fabrice.com / @fabwittner
“This photograph, named Warm Tones of Home, was taken in Greenland in a small village called Oqaatsut on the West coast, near Disko Bay. The enlightened silhouette is created by combining a hand cut stencil to light painting. I tried to show the spirit of traditional Inuit culture within the contemporary environment of Greenland, with the help of ghostly figures inspired by Inuits ancestors. The stencils I used were made from century-old pictures I collected from different library collections or, like this young boy, from private archives of a Danish family.
In the cold nights of the northern latitudes, on a piece of frozen land surrounded by sea ice, the houses and their warm glows are like warming candles. What represents more the warmth of a home than the orange and yellowish tones of light from the windows in the blue surrounding of the northern night? This might be the first reason I chose this particular kid among the dozen of stencils I cut to stand in front of this welcoming porch. The reality was much less romantic – the home of an alcoholic and violent man with kids that had to grow up faster than they should. As if the environment wasn’t harsh enough outside those wooden walls. I realised later that this kid was maybe the ghost of a lost childhood.”
JAN PRENGEL
www.janprengel.com / @janprengel
“This photograph, image #1 from my series Houses of Individuality, was captured on the small Venetian island of Burano in 2020. The series shows the brightly painted houses on the island, a bold tradition which began somewhat as a beacon for fishermen approaching land so they could identify the buildings through the thick Venetian fog. Today, the colors reflect the various personalities of the owners. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, fewer people visited the island than usual in 2020, and these circumstances made the unique place seem even more surreal. You feel like you could be on an a movie set – my chosen image with its frontal perspective and exceptional colors could be a still from a Wes Anderson movie. It conveys the feeling you get when you stroll along the canals and let the numerous colors work their magic on you.”
LEAH NASH (NASHCO PHOTO)
www.nashcophoto.com / @nashcophoto
“Shot for the New York Times, I just love the stark emotion on Brianna’s face and the tight grip shared by the two which reflects the universal connection between mother and daughter. The lightness of the background gives them a bit of a halo and draws your eye to the center of the frame. The whole image just feels timeless to me because of the classic wardrobe and surroundings.”
GALIT SELIGMANN
www.galit-seligmann.com / @galitseligmann
“This image was made in the neighbourhood of Mattancherry, in Cochin, while travelling through India in 2018. My favourite time of day to photograph is early in the morning, when locals have just started their daily routine, and there are not many tourists about. I came across this couple on one of my morning wanderings. still in their pyjamas, and sitting on their porch. I loved the triangulated gaze betweem the three of us, and the backdrop of their home resembled a stage set. Visually the warm hues pop out against the subtle palette of the home. which compliments the feel of the scene.”
TAKAKO KIDO
www.takakokido.com / @takako.kido
“I titled this image, “He Sometimes Wants to Go Back to My Tummy Again.” When I did aerial yoga, I learned the womb pose. I was completely wrapped by the smooth fabric of the hammock in the air and deeply relaxed. It felt so good. When my son was 2, I once asked what he was doing in my tummy. He said “kick, kick.” He remembered. The feeling of comfort and security when he was in the womb must be still in his subconscious. He was 9 when I made this self-portrait, still small in this big world. He can feel being my baby again. Even grown-ups sometimes feel that way when the life is hard.”
ELISABETTA COCIANI
www.elisabettacociani.com / @elisabettacociani
“I particularly love this image. My daughters Eva and Anita are here in a place we love – a roulotte in the middle of the woods and the mountains of the Alps, a kind of second home. It’s the summer of 2017 and Eva is five, Anita is two. The day is starting and the girls are having breakfast as a beautiful light pours in through one of the small windows. There is a precious silence. In the face of such wonder I grab my camera and take this picture. The image is part of a long-term project started in 2015 when I was expecting my second daughter. I had bought an old second-hand camera and I started taking photographs without any specific purpose: photography accompanied me and helped me through a significant period in my life – a period of change, happiness, worries and the search for a new balance. It is a “sentimental journey” into the world of my deepest affections, an intimate world that is revealed day after day through images.”
DENIS VEJAS
www.denisvejas.net / @denisvejas
“This image was taken in Chernihiv in Ukraine, a couple of days after the Russian army retreated after a month-long attempt to capture the city. It depicts an apartment in a bombarded residential house. The room has been abandoned by a person fleeing the war, however it feels like the things that were left behind are still breathing the life that used to be here. For me, this photograph carries a strong sense of fragility and temporality towards what is considered to be home. There is a feeling of urgent escape, contradicted by sadness for longing to be home. This picture reminds me of the realities of war that expand far beyond the battlefields.”
AMBER MARIE RILEY
www.ambermarie.cargo.site / @gurlhoods
“This image is from an ongoing body of work, currently untitled. It was taken last summer and subject is my boyfriend, Fin. He was helping me move out of my last student house and as he was coming down the stairs with all these collapsed boxes I suddenly felt inclined to capture the moment; a wave came over me and I realised how important this moment is in both our lives moving forwards – finishing the final steps of our university experience together, in the same way it began when we first met each other in halls.
The image holds a great sense of longing and loss for me due to the associations that come with moving boxes as well as the expression on the subject’s face. This image really does mean a lot to me personally but I think that it speaks to the viewer about much wider themes of loss and emotional yearning, which is something we’ve all experienced at some point in our lives.”
JOAQUÍN LUNA
“A new place, new company, recent loss, longing, sun, sun, walking, looking, looking back, water, forgetting, a new home, my home, only in my house.”
RONA BAR & OFEK AVSHALOM
www.thefotometro.com / @fotometro.art
“In this image you can see Yuri and Johann, an elderly couple living in Vienna, Austria, captured in their home for our project Us. For over two years we photographed couples in their homes, mostly around Israel but also in the UK and Europe. Our aim is to represent couples that are often overlooked by mainstream media, by making the invisible visible.
For us, the most special thing about this project and this image in particularly, is the experience of witnessing love, intimacy, and acceptance between couples, which go beyond social norms in terms of gender, body image, disability, age, culture and so on. Yuri and Johann are a perfect example of this. We look at our craft as a means of advocating the urge for a more diverse and authentic global community. Turning the lens onto themes such as identity, individuality, and relationships, our practice aims to be a mirror for the infinite facets of the human experience, pushing the boundaries of gender, race, and sexuality among others.”
