alexander berg: ONE SHOT San Francisco... DIGITAL!

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

ONE SHOT San Francisco... DIGITAL!

James Chiang invited me to his grad class at Academy of Art University to speak about my project. After showing work from New York, Beijing and Istanbul we set up a light and invited the students to participate in having their portrait taken in one frame!
Without a 4x5 camera and without type55 polaroid James urged me to try using a digital camera... to my surprise, when we strictly kept all the other components the same the results were amazingly similar to that of film
James and SF gave birth to ONE SHOT Digital

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The ONE SHOT Project

In a portrait session a number of years ago, taking a break to look over the images, both the subject and I were struck by how the first shot of the day was simply it. We couldn’t get beyond that heightened state of that first frame. Over the years, I began to see this phenomenon again and again: that the first few frames of a particular shoot always held more life, more intuition than later frames. Those first shots simply kept asking to be looked at again, they endured, they had something to share with the viewer. It was from this observation that I decided to create a project wherein instead of diluting the process by shooting hundreds of frames and editing afterwards, I wanted to edit prior to exposing the film. In other words, I wanted to put all the energy into one single frame, one moment, one shot!

In working with a large-format camera, a very deliberate and precise tool, the process is slowed down, This helps both the subject and me to get present and concentrate our energy. In order to get to know the people who came to participate in ONE SHOT and to help them get present to their portrait, I asked a few questions about where they were in life and to title their own image. With this exchange and approximately 15-20 minutes, we set out to make an image that could truly capture their presence, who they were at that moment in time. Some people kept their guard up, others laughed, some cried, and some shared their most intimate stories. Humanity showed up in many different ways, and I was honored by the trust people offered me and the project. A word that came to mind was "photo-therapy". We all have this need to be seen, whether we are from New York, Beijing or Istanbul. In front of the camera, the moment we are about to see a reflection of ourselves, we are all equal.