While editing photographs I’ll sometimes play a documentary to keep me company, later watching it again so I can actually see the images along with the story that is being told. Recently I discovered Nina Davenport, she is a genius documentarian. Genius.
I was mesmorized by Always a Bridesmaid, casually coming across it on HBO one afternoon, and then finding myself googling Nina Davenport later that night. To my delight she had a brand new documentary out, First Comes Love, and that, too was available for immediate viewing on HBO.
She has a website with links to more documentaries, I want to see them all.
Nina Davenport is brave, real, raw, personal and passionate. This all comes through in the two films and many interviews I have read.
It’s the same thing that attracted me to Annie Lebowitz, her ability to capture life beyond the commissioned photos. I adore her book, A Photographer’s Life 1990-2005. In it are photographs of her elderly parents waking up, her seventy-five year old mom making breakfast in her swimsuit, her daughter Sarah playing at the beach and her friend and partner Susan Sontag sick and eventually passing away from cancer. It is those images that stuck with me after seeing an exhibit of her photographs in person several years ago.
Each time I am photographing a family, newborn, siblings, friends, pet or my own life I hope to bring that genuine quality to the images. To make images that will warm my client’s heart or my own years from now when the moment has passed but the feeling is just as strong as the day the photograph was taken.
photographs: Hermie giving Case kisses, Facetiming with Kadee, using the self-timer in the car with Mum
