Susan Kandel
Susan Kandel, b. 1949
American born photographer Susan Kandel wasn't particularly interested in photography at a young age. She started with photography when she received her first camera as a graduation gift after college. "It hadn't occurred to me to want [camera]” but she took it with her on a road trip and discovered that with a camera you see all these things you haven’t noticed before.
She attended classes at Creative photography lab at MIT where she also partly worked in exchange for the classes and and she continued to receive an MFA at Massachusetts College of Art.
Her At Home book published by Stanley Barker is a project Susan spent more than 10 years on and she photographed many families at their homes. “I just kept showing up and became part of their lives” "I hear other photographers say they've got to get to know people first before they can photograph them. I'm sure that's true for a lot of people, but I skipped it and got to know them by photographing them,"
Books:
At Home: In October 1979, Pope John Paul II came to the Boston Common. Susan Kandel was there taking pictures of families who’d come to see him, carrying on with work she had started months earlier photographing families at Revere Beach.
QUOTES:
" I love it when there's a million things going on at once and it's a challenge to make them all work within a frame"
"I hear other photographers say they've got to get to know people first before they can photograph them. I'm sure that's true for a lot of people, but I skipped it and got to know them by photographing them,"
“I just kept showing up and became part of their lives”
“I was attracted to the infinite possibilities of what I could make happen in a small rectangle”
“With photography, you start with what’s out there in the world and then select a piece of time and space to capture in your rectangle.”
“I wasn’t there to see the Pope, but rather the crowd”
“I liked rooms that had some evidence of the lives of folks who lived there”
“I came to realise that some families would be in the same spots day after day, year after year. The families knew each other and knew where to find each other. I focused in on some families who let me get closer.”
DID YOU KNOW?
Her At Home book published by Stanley Barker is a project Susan spent more than 10 years on and she photographed many families at their homes
Susan Kandel wasn't particularly interested in photography at a young age.
During the workshop with Garry Winogrand he took special interest in her work
Hello fellow photographers. In this episode I am talking with photographer Susan Kandel and we are talking about her new book AT HOME.