Background ~
Marc is an award winning landscape photographer, who mainly shoots in a documentary style. Capturing the stories of the environment around him over extended periods of time.
Talk ~
A photographer is not just about taking pictures but its about talking and listening and engaging in conversation to share your work and make a difference with your photography. The way you engage with society is equally as important as the work you make.
He always makes work thinking who is it for, as his work is documentary his work is always for who is in his photos as that is who the story is about. He is sharing peoples stories and showing the public someone else's life and story.
You have to always be aware of the most important person when making the photograph and it is the model.
He worked as a commercial architectural photographer that funded his true passion and style of photographer he wanted to be. The money made gave him the time to make his personal work with one taking 4 years and the other taking 6 years, so the commercial work gave him the time and money to do so.
Process of making work ~
Networking and talking, interacting with others photographers is the most important skill to him.
All of his work created is about the past, it may possibly be of current stories now but in the future it will be history for people to view, reflect and have the story told. As his work is documentary he has specified his style of working, dealing with the right components of nature to represent the correct view of the story.
'The Last Stand' project made him stand and think about all of these objects he photographed from over 100 locations. He revisits a place many times to view the best lighting, composition, and weather for the story. Presenting a specific view to speak about the story.
He made a book for this project which he now self-publishes.
His current work is about the Holocaust, telling the story of this from his models point of view, applying his refined visual language to the images.
Gathering information from the people that lived the stories or know of the truth, having someones testimony, he uses to guide his views, then visiting the location he takes the experiences to re-live himself, using his skill set and camera to visualise the history.
In his book he uses text as it is important to give context to his imagery. Ending up with 22 stories but never made a choice for the work, it was always what the work needed. He went with the flow of the work. He let people come to him, it was always about what the model wanted to share with him.
That is an important part to his work as he believes that best present the history and the story of that specific event.
opening yourself up and listening the opportunities will come to you.
His photographs represent a part of a story. They may not be specifically a direct reference but something that can be used to show and tell a part of a story. They are a vehicle and a trigger point to make people to talk.
a photographer is what you can do for another, so telling and showing a story helps another. learning and educating something you didn't know before.
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