Lara Y. Stepanovic

Der Verweis ist spitze! Dankkke! :)

“I saw your pictures on your website. You are very good! You should have taught me to make pictures like that.”

These are all pictures by accident. it is my selection or “art direction” that makes the pictures look good or maybe interesting. i always take lots of pictures. sometimes there is a rule like “get close as possible” or “take the photo from a special view”. take different photos of the same thing and decide later which one is the best. but always think about why do you take this photo and why do you take this photo in this or that way. there is always the question of an author: what do you want to show in the picture? Do you want to show just a man or do you want to show afrika? what makes the man “afrika”? is it the dirty shirt? is it his mimic? is it his hands? is it the art how he stands, gesticulates or walks? is it the way he looks at you? so i always try to keep the pictures with a “message”. i know you know that.
additionally in my opinion arranged fotos are mostly boring. sometimes they are funny, arty or just informative but there is always the livliness missing. don´t be shy with your camera. don´t be shy to have a crooked, blurred and wiggly picture. don´t think to much about the quality of the picture. think about the reason of the chosen motif. beecause sometimes you have to be fast and in a way a paparazzo to get an intimate sight, a honest or serious situation. a photographer compared to a journalist writer is in the same way a non-realistic author or story-teller of things he want to show but often doesn´t exist right in the moment. It´s up on you to show what could be important right in the moment. In most cases there ist not much to see/to tell, so you have to make something out of it. you have to bring the story into your photo by selecting some important details or references. but never speak it out loudly. never show it directly. this makes it feel like a fake. but of course it is always a fake. every picture lies in a way. a crying woman in the picture tells a story but it doesn´t tell her story. just because it´s a capture of a moment where the circumstances are masking or banned. maybe she is laughing later? maybe she kills herself later? All these things we don´t know.
It’s all about authenticity, credibility, plausibility, reliability. right in the moment.