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Self-portraiture as Catharsis
My photography is a form of therapy, a personal, emotional and sometimes turbulent struggle with the complexity of emotions. I feel my life and art have become intertwined and to bury this mental state deep within would only allow it to thrive but through my use of photography, I am offered a sense of catharsis.
My self-depictions manifest within the same four walls, my bedroom. The room I believe is the keeper of my trapped and repressed emotions. This often heavily constr...
A little background
I was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela. My chosen field of study was production engineering, but was I taking photography classes in the evenings and began working for a super cool magazine called Urbe, which is a bit like what Vice is in the UK now. I quickly became the chief photographer shooting all kinds of amazing and interesting people, and it was then that I knew that this is what I wanted to do with my life. Looking back it was quite an interesting time - I’d be learnin...
A former life . . .
Before my life as a photographer I worked in Social Services for many years advocating and caring for adults with severe intellectual and psychical disabilities. It was an aim of mine after completing my photography studies to somehow incorporate my former work with my new creative profession.
A film connection
Shortly after going freelance I was contacted by a Diversional Therapist from a Sydney hospital who had a client with a Traumatic Brain Injury who, before a tragic accident som...
I’m Anil Mistry and I’m a photographer. I shoot a whole variety of work, including headshots, documentary, portraits and personally initiated projects. Whatever interests me and helps me to improve my body of work.
I’ve been asked to talk about an area of my photographic work that I have a real passion for. In my case, that's the capturing of street portraits.
Why do I take street portraits?
There’s two main reasons I do it, and I’ll try to go through them succinctly:
It’s not easy
...
Sharing my skills
I’ve recently started working as a lecturer on BTEC and HND photography courses at Swindon College. A job which I’m enjoying immensely. Teaching was something I’d never considered before, until I started helping friends who were studying on the same BA Photography course as me. I enjoyed helping them but most of all I enjoyed seeing them understand and use the skills that I’d shown them.
I now teach mainly 16 – 20-year-olds, which is enormously satisfying. Watching thei...
A medium for the moment
I always travel with my 35mm SLR and a stack of Ilford HP5 and Ilford FP4 film. I definitely prefer the look and process of shooting film when traveling and photographing on the street and I find my small SLR with it’s 50mm lens is small and inconspicuous enough to capture intimate street portraits. Shooting everything on the same 50mm lens and film medium gives my work a consistent look and feel. I have always found shooting film slows down my process, it forces me to think mor...
Window Cleaners shot on ILFORD XP2S
An unknown language
When I started in photography I was always put off from film, by the balance (in my mind anyway), between the effort and time taken out of my workflow in developing, and the rolling cost. As well as my dependence and already intimate comprehension of digital systems. Film was an unknown language, and not one I was prepared to learn at the time.
Expanding my understanding
Recently however I have been looking for different ways to expand my und...
ILFORD Photo UK student photographer of the year
The increasing popularity of film photography in schools and colleges has seen a record number of darkroom prints submitted to the annual ILFORD PHOTO student photography competition. The high standard of entries from schools, colleges and universities across the country has made the selection of a winner a very difficult task.
However, a unanimous winner has been chosen and the title of ‘ILFORD PHOTO UK Student Photographer of the Year 2017/18’ has b...
Images with feeling
The most attractive element of analogue is its delicacy. The analogue process has remained so ingrained into my practice, I can't imagine working in any other way. Seeking images which stir a feeling within and seeing that image through each stage of the process to finally create a hand-made darkroom print.
The print may not be perfect, I do not tirelessly work on test strips creating a technically perfect image, I never leave the confines of the darkroom to inspect the print once it...
An experiment in chemical possibilities
When I took up a camera after a few years’ hiatus in 1990, I was surprised to discover that I could no longer get a black & white film developed through the nearest camera shop, never mind through the local pharmacy. If memory serves, I was told it would cost $40 for a single film. Naturally, I returned to processing my own film just I had done when I first took up a camera in the early 1970s. The world had moved on, and colour film was the default medium f...