WHERE DO I SIT?
Joel Kessler
Chairs might be lifeless articles for ordinary use, but many of them tell lively stories about their surroundings and owners. Think about the location. What happened here, or will happen here? Where is the chair standing? Examine the chair’s placement in correlation to other objects in the scene. Are there other chairs surrounding it? Did the previous occupant of the chair have company, or were they alone? Touch the chair and feel the surface. Study its design and take a seat for a while. Lastly, take a photo of the chair in the scene and let it tell its story. What story is it telling you?
As you might be able to tell from the photo stories, my photographic eye is often drawn to chairs. No matter if they are aesthetic or not, I like taking photos of them. I find that chairs have something calming and peaceful about them. I enjoy imagining stories about the people who have used these ordinary objects before and the lives they might have lived. I think about the people who have witnessed the scene set before me, people who never paused to take a seat, mere bystanders—pun intended!
Besides photographing chairs, it is my passion to capture people in their element, such as at outings with friends, and to experiment with analogue photography in various ways. Film photography, being my main form of artistic expression, offers so much artistic freedom in taking pictures, developing, and post-processing in unique ways. The thrill of finally seeing the developed images, not knowing how the shots turned out, never gets old. Like life, photography is like a box of chocolates: “You never know what you’re going to get.”
This article first appeared in PRISMA, Issue 11.