Igor Motov
I started to photograph when I was 11 using my father’s old Soviet Smena 8 camera. During my teenage years I went through a couple of point and shoot cameras, graduated to Zenit SLR and even dipped my toes into the medium format. Then because of work, family and moving across Atlantic I had to put my camera aside for quite awhile.
Few years ago, I have stumbled upon the book of photographs Ipswich: A Celebration of Light, Land and Sea by Andrew Borsari. These wonderful images of the town where I live woke up my passion to photography. They showed me the beauty I almost stopped noticing in my daily routine. Going back to photography changed the way I view the world. Recently, photography for me became a mindfulness practice. The photographs I like the most are usually a byproduct of walking meditations with camera in my hands rather then a result of well planned photo sessions.
Because of my academic background in digital image processing, I consider digital post processing to be a valuable instrument in conveying my vision to viewers. Human eye is not just an optical device. What we see is affected by many internal and external factors such as our mood, previous experience, sound and even smell. Most of these factors cannot be captured by camera. On the other hand, digital manipulation can bring photograph closer to the photographer’s vision of reality. When I am changing a photograph in the photo editor, I am not trying to alter the reality, but rather bring the image closer to the reality as I perceived when the image was captured.
Images in this exhibition were made using a Canon Digital SLR camera.